The Francis Bacon Opera

In 1986, Melvyn Bragg interviewed artist Francis Bacon for the now cancelled and much-lamented Southbank Show. Throughout the conversation, Bragg and Bacon have a few drinks, leading to an unexpectedly candid insight into Bacon's process and life. It wasn't entirely inevitable, however, that this meeting would lead to a comic opera.

"Opera is certainly not popular, but nor should it be," says composer Stephen Crowe. "If you equate 'popularity' with 'relevance' (which I think a lot of people would) then the most relevant form of culture is TV talent shows." Yet even in an over-crowded Fringe, Crowe is confident that The Francis Bacon Opera will stand out.

"The fact that it's a brand new opera is one thing, and the fact that it's fucking brilliant is another." he laughs. Using the text of the Bragg-Bacon encounter- "it's either a direct transcript, retaining all the fluffs and mispronunciations and interrupted thoughts, or it's nothing" - Crowe gets inside the mind of one of the twentieth century's most visceral painters.

"The most inspiring thing about Bacon is his childlike openness," he continues. "He says controversial things, and always has fascinating opinions- but they are genuine. They don't come from any need to be shocking or outrageous, they come from the need to be totally honest."

Bacon might have found a visual language that deconstructed the expected politeness of paint - before the explosion of conceptual art, he was already pushing taste and acceptability - but his incisive vision could be turned inward. "He can be as dismissive about his own work as he can be scathing about Rothko, and he loves a lot of things, too." And back in the 1980s, art and celebrity were not so entwined: this interview was not about the hype.

Bacon reveals, Crowe states, "the sort of vehemence and adoration you hear behind closed doors, but never in a broadcast interview, unless there is a drive for publicity at the root of it. And the fact that Melvyn Bragg was willing to join him in his quest for honesty, and that alcohol lubricated the way is just perfect!"

 

C too, venue 4, 

19–27 Aug, 

18:00 (1hr00)

 

Clout Theatre

Much of the excitement surrounding the second year of Fringe activity at Summerhall is centred on the programme: last year, the very presence of an idiosyncratic venue was enough, but this year, the team seem to have delivered a diverse, dynamic line-up. 

Clout Theatre is a a fine example of how Summerhall is attracting a more esoteric type of performance. This international physical theatre company has members from Russia, France, Turkey and Scotland,  performed in the Louvre Museum and the Istanbul Municipal Theatre. But most importantly, at least in terms of style, all of its  members trained at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris.

How A Man Crumbled promises three "bouffonesque" characters (roughly - nasty clowns) and a story that escapes the story-tellers. The Lecoq connection is important - "There are four companies from our year alone at the Fringe this year: Rhum and Clay, Let Slip, Superbolt and us," observes Co-Artistic DirectorGeorge Ramsay - not only in Clout's physicality, but in the willingness to slip outside of the usual theatrical cliches. With director Mine Çerçi known for interpreting Beckett, and a Russian former figure skater in the cast, Clout are hitting out into absurdist territory.

"The show is inspired by Russian absurdist Daniil Kharms," explains ramsay. "And his stories frequently end with ‘enough’ or ‘that’s enough of that’ or ‘and the neighbours all went out for lunch and got run over’. Abruptness is key to his work. He was a precursor to the Theatre of The Absurd."

If Absurdism was once the Shock of the New - when Beckett slapped a couple of vagrants on stage and had them ramble through an arid emotional landscape, the revolution that eventually became Live Art was heralded - it can be a little safe and predictable. For example, without disparaging Dominic Hill's excellent Beckett double-bill at Glasgow's Citizen's Theatre, it's clear that Hill could include these dramas of decay and death in a programme that is popular. But by investigating the lesser-known absurdists, and investing them with a new physicality, Clout are out-flanking mere surrealism.

"Khams was writing in Soviet Russia in the 1930s, about as absurd a time and place as you get!" laughs Ramsay. "Comparisons have been drawn between him and Beckett and Ionesco: I think Beckett is a great influence for us all and I hope we have captured something of his tragicomic spirit which exists also in Kharms." Yet Clout are adding to the intellectual pleasures of the absurd. "A lot of people go to Lecoq because they crave a living theatre and are dis-engaged with a neck-up psychological acting style."

The bouffon is one of Lecoq's gift to theatre, and the three characters in How A Man Crumbled are the key difference between a simple retelling and something more engrossing. Ramsay says that they don't help the drama along, but rather  "get distracted, tell other stories, fight, spit at each other, discuss Pushkin and Gogol and eat vegetables."  

3  - 26 August (not 18,19). Summerhall 15:30 (1  hour)

A Taste for the International

Last year, Flavia D'Avila was part of the dynamic Edinburgh company, Tightlaced Theatre. Being a restless soul, she has struck out with a new company for 2012, Frontereiras Theatre Lab, nipped across to join the Laughing Horse Free Fringe and come up with a triple bill that consciously crosses national borders, and copies a menu to bring a taster of short, sharp shows.

"Fronteiras wants to generate dialogue and exchange of knowledge and talent across cultures, and research ways of working towards the creation of multifaceted performance events that contain aesthetic elements of diverse cultures," D'Avila begins. "Hopefully the format of the 3-course taster menu will attract some attention. We have also teamed up with Howies from Waterloo Place and will be distributing vouchers for discounted 3-course dinners with our programmes for people coming to see the show."

The three plays range from Scottish (Heather Irvine’s Lovely Burden is the “main course” play, a comic piece looking at the juxtaposition of how being around old people and waiting for death is much like being single), Australia (Angus Algie's “starter” play, Misguided Tour, the tale of an ex-con who gives nocturnal tours of the old jail where he used to be an inmate) to Norway (Oda Fiskum brings the “dessert”: a quick-paced piece about chains and families and teams and guidelines and coupons and membership cards and making the customer happy and smiling and asking about your day and giving you 20% off on a pastry of your choice if you get a medium sized hot beverage). Yet they are all driven by Fronteiras' commitment to fresh, new writing.

D'Avila picks up the story. "I knew Heather Irvine from university and the first idea for the show was born from a text exchange between the two of us on a quiet day at our respective dayjobs. Heather wanted to write a play about the way we deal with singledom and relationships nowadays and I wanted to help her develop it and then direct it, so I invited Torya and Jasmin, two actresses who I've worked with before, to workshop Heather's ideas and develop the script, which would be our only show."

However, D'Avila's own roving led to an addition to the bill. "I went to Denmark for a couple of weeks to attend a course at the Odin Teatret and I met Oda Fiskum, a brilliant writer from Norway who lives in China. On one of our evenings off, Oda asked me to read some of her short scripts to give her feedback and I immediately claimed Team Player, and thought it would be a good idea to present it as a double bill with the play I was developing with Heather."

Even at this stage, the menu format hadn't been developed "I'm not sure how the idea for the Tasters came about, but I felt the need to add a third short play," she continues. "I sent out a call on the social networks and received a handful of submissions, eventually selecting Angus' Misguided Tour. The cast are mostly actors I've worked with before, apart from Sarah and Mandy, who responded to a casting call for actors with languages and will be performing in Italian and Punjabi respectively."

Despite being a new company at the Fringe, the diversity of cast and crew is hard to beat: D'Avila came to Edinburgh from Brazil, and has worked in London and Milan. But the Fringe is not the end of the company's ambitions. "Amongst the projects we are planning for the future are symposia, artist residencies and a full-scale transcultural show for 2014-15," she promises.

THEATRE TASTERS

by Angus Algie, Heather Irvine and Oda Fiskum. Directed by Flavia D’Avila.

3^rd- 12^th August 2012. Laughing Horse @ The Phoenix Cellar Bar, venue 146. 12pm (55min) - FREE

JackinaBox

Jackinbox are a young company - last year was their first Fringe - but they are backing up their vision of energetic theatre with two shows for 2012 that are full of intensity and passion. 99.9 Degrees is presumably an allusion to the moment before the water hits boiling point, and Moliere's Don Juan suggests that there's life in the old fox's tales of seduction yet. John Askew took some time to explain how he hopes that Jackinabox can survive the Fringe, and bring those predictable promises to life.

In all honesty the Fringe doesn't present the greatest environment for performers. The late night social aspects, the 10 hours flyering, and the want to see as much as you can makes it difficult to perform to the highest standard every night. It takes much more stamina than a normal 30 night run, both vocally and physically. So in that its a challenge. But one which is achieved by thriving on the atmosphere, being more creative and experimental than ever with both the show and advertising, and ultimately the adrenaline of the festival is something which is very addictive.  Everyone who does the full run of the fringe will find that the first week in September is almost a right off - you crash hard. 

The approach taken to the shows have been very difficult. Don Juan is a text based approach used when creating work in the past, whereas 99.9 Degrees is something created from character driven Physical Theatre, Improvisation and Devising. Because the approaches have been very different, they two shows ultimately say different things about the company. 99.9 Degrees has been worked using an approach we have wanted to use for a long time. Essentially being playful with theatre, and with no constraints we have created something which is very free and often catches the audience off guard. Don Juan suggests the company's commitment to text. Commitment in a way that allows us to put our style on an old legend, presenting this hedonist in a way we don't think anyone else has done. 

The festival itself has had a big influence on our work this year, from some if the things we saw last year. You can afford to be very different in Edinburgh, and designing work for the Fringe audience is very different from designing work for touring. That's not to say we have undermined our work in anyway, but we have created two one hour long shows perfect for the fringe audience. Young contemporary theatre has played a big role in our development so far, in that we are aiming to create work that catches the audience off guard, entertains them, and ultimately gets them to think about how theatre should be presented. In that, we look to develop either told work in a very different way, or create completely new work from our own experiences. 99.9 Degrees for example is based around memories, memories which stem from the casts experiences.  

For us it isn't a case of physical theatre fitting in. We see physical theatre as synonymous with the text, in that it is just another given circumstance (directed or choreographed movement) that the character must feel completely natural doing. We often work with layers. So the first layer is the movement, the second layer is the relationship between these characters and how that contributes to the movement, and the third layer is how the character influences the movement. When choreographing, we often start with the gesture, enlarge it into more 'elaborate' movement, and then its stems from something natural in that character. Personally I think there is nothing more exciting that explosive physical theatre, because it allows you to look at emotion, relationship, and exploration of character in a very different way. One in which each audience member can take something different from it.  

The audience can expect theatre full of those cliche buzz words - engaging, exciting, unique even? In total honesty they can expect to be entertained, and see things that they will remember amidst the wealth of great theatre at the Fringe. They will be challenged as to how they think theatre should be, and won't for a moment be thinking about anything else than what is happening on the stage. Holly Kendrick (ISDF) told me last year that the most engaging theatre 'gets off the train'. Its logical but it isn't what the audience expected to happen. That is very much about what Don Juan and 99.9 Degrees are about.       

Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2012 

1st - 27 August

C eca

'99.9 degrees' 17.30 (1h)

'Don Juan' 18.45 (1h)

The Submarine Show

It's my ambition to make my criticism interesting enough to detain the odd reader -it's difficult enough in the first place, when even I'd rather be playing Avenger's Alliance on Facebook than learning about theatre. Add to this my preoccupation with the more marginal forms of performance - as comedian Ashley Strand suggested, interpretative dance is top of my aesthetic tree - and I end up spending more time trying to explain what I like than actually stating why I like it.

Submarine seems like a good bet, though. The press release notes that it was "created at the Kinetic Arts Center by Jaron Aviv Hollander and Slater Brooks Penney", so it appears to slot into my anti-script, pro-devised theatre obsession, and promises physical theatre. I'm already in, but I have been burnt before: some companies have fooled me by wandering around a stage and calling it "physical", when it is really just another version of Hamlet.


Hollander goes some way to put my mind at ease. "Submarine is as physical as physical theatre gets! We are both heavily involved in dance and circus arts and we draw upon our physical skills to carry the show." The connection to dance and circus is a good one - the word is only an addition in these genres, and it fits that a physical theatre would emerge from them.


"The story, the world, and the characters are told in our own unique language of acrobatic mime supported by vocal sound effects," Hollander elaborates. "The show has no spoken language and yet every moment of a very elaborate narrative is both clear and engaging. To carry this off we have to be physically articulate and athletic. A wonderful results of this wordless language we use is that it makes the show accessible to anybody regardless of what language they speak."


It gets better: Hollander has articulated exactly why I love physical theatre: it has the potential to be both original and accessible. But, I worry, how will it stand out in the context of the Fringe, a notoriously busy arena. Hollander sounds confident.


"We are an acrobatic, a cappella foley mime duet alone in our genre: we engage the audience in a way that few other shows do." 
But are there laughs? The Fringe tends to demand them...
"The show is not only engaging and funny is it offers a unique theatrical experience. Historically this show has attracted most of its audience on word-of-mouth. In every other context the show has created buzz, we believe it will do the same in Edinburgh."

Hollander's claims to the circus are not false: he was in Cirque du Soleil - I might quibble with their aesthetic but not the skill and technique - and Submarine evolved from improvisation around a single sentence: Hollander said to Penney "hey, we are in a submarine!" Taking the idea on the road, they honed the story, as the trapped submariners cross terrains and seek an escape from the bottom of the sea. An encouraging sign was the award for Techie's Choice at the San Francisco Fringe. The techies get to see all the shows, all the time. If they still enjoy it when awards time comes around, something is going right.


" Almost every moment of the show was created in an improvised moment and then refined through repetition," Hollander says. "We began with a wonderful limitation: this proves to be the improvisational equivalent of superhighway. This small cramped space with lots of buttons, switches, and levers lead us toward what still seems to be unlimited possibility."


Even now, as the pair make their first visit to edinburgh, the development continues. "No two shows will be the same!" Hollander promises. "I recommend everybody come to see the show at least three times. There are a few parts of the show that are deliberately unplanned, where we just get to play. Some of the biggest laughs often come from these spontaneous moments."


Back to my original musings on physical theatre, and Hollander has cleared up a few of my concerns. The reason I like devised pieces is exactly because of the potential freedom for each performance to be unique. The lack of a script also makes the show easy to translate into different countries, and the open possibilities of improvisation allow humour and pathos. Now, if I can just keep off Facebook for a few hours...


C too, venue 4, Edinburgh Festival Fringe Dates: 2–27 Aug (not 14)
Time: 16:55(0hr50)
Ticket prices: £8.50-£10.50 / concessions £6.50-£8.50 / children £4.50-£6.50