LONDON CITY NIGHTS: experimental

Sunday, June 23, 2019

Review: 'Me And My Whale' at The Vaults, 22nd June 2019

Sunday, June 23, 2019 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Reviewed by David James
Rating: 4 Stars

We are currently living through the Holocene extinction event - the sixth and most dramatic mass extinction that has ever taken place on Earth. Previous mass extinctions, most famously the massive comet or asteroid impact that killed off the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous era, are thought of as quick cataclysmic events. Yet the extinction of the dinosaurs took place over a period of 10,000 years.

In the current extinction, humanity is the deadly asteroid smashing into the Earth - and we're doing a far more efficient job than some lousy space rock ever could. Overhunting, habitat destruction, disease, deforestation, global warming and pollution are decimating life on this planet at an ever-accelerating rate. One shocking piece of research claims that by 2050 there could be, by weight, more plastic than fish in the ocean.

All this brings us neatly to Xavier Velastin and Hannah Mook's Me And My Whale. This is an abstract, experimental piece of theatre that tells the story of a submarine captain falling in love with a lonely whale. While exploring the depths, she discovers the moving sound of his song and seeks to join him.

On paper, that story sounds twee as hell, but the narrative quickly proves to be more a vehicle for a series of auditory and visual experiments. Staged in traverse, the performance space is bookended by two enormous sheets of gossamer-thin plastic sheeting. Between these lie a series of objects that are more art installation than set. Between them are three dangling bowls of liquid, an overhead projector with liquid on top beams rippling waves on to the walls and a big bowl in which Mook dips her face into and sings through the bubbles.

Velastin and Mook use the stage as a giant musical instrument, combining the pleasingly low-tech (the old style overhead projector gave me flashbacks to school assemblies) with what I'm assuming is live digital audio manipulation. I don't know precisely how they're producing this soundscape, but it appears that their interactions and movements through the set become translated into sound. This creates a unique hour-long piece of music that's different every time its performed.

This music is variously dreamy, meditative, funny and horrifying. The long stretches without dialogue give time to lose yourself in the soundscape, realising that the stage is a microcosm of the wider ocean: an ecosystem hemmed in with plastic and gradually chemically polluted as time goes on. This is complemented by long, low synthetic wails, which take on a morbid quality, as if we're hearing the dying gasps of the sea. We also get an idea of sonic pollution, with simulated and disorientating radar pings and drilling encroaching on a natural peace.

Horror aside, there's also a scene where a woman has passionate sex with a whale, so the show is never in danger of becoming truly miserablist.

Me And My Whale isn't for everyone. You're going to have to come with this with a high tolerance for arty shit, combined with the ability trust that all this abstract noise and odd behaviour has a point. But I kinda loved it: it takes gumption to try and capture on stage the destruction of the oceans and the environmental calamity that mankind has wrought. Perhaps the only way to manage to communicate the sheer existential terror of what is happening right now is through arty shit.

Here's hoping Me And My Whale is performed more in future: we need more shows like this ready to push the boat (or submarine) out.

Further performances of Me And My Whale will be announced on their website.

Friday, March 6, 2015

'LikeMe Labs / Alisa Leimane' at Arebyte Gallery, 5th March 2015

Friday, March 6, 2015 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

The text in the picture above, found tucked away on a bookshelf in the corner of LikeMe Labs neatly summarises my feelings. This show is a peculiar experience, acting largely as a springboard for the audience's personal thoughts and neuroses. Even defining those present as an 'audience' feels limiting, Alisa Leimane smudging the boundaries between the art/observer, personal/public and reality/fiction.

So what is it? Well, this normally austere gallery has become a lot more homely. Carpet covers the floor and there's domestic touches like a stocked fruitbowl, coat hooks, a clothes rail and a sofa. A half-used tube of lip gloss casually lies next to the information sheets. Further on there's a large white cube, the outside of which is peppered with framed screengrabs. Shots of Tinder matches jostle for space with chatlogs and hand-written notes. The interior of the cube contains an office, within which the artist appears to have temporarily set up shop.

Alisa explained that what we're seeing are the results of a several distinct online personalities she's constructed. This collection of parapersonalities exist across social media and dating websites, the world at large revealing their own desires as they interact with them. So, for example, one glamorous personality might have an upmarket house, a nice dog and spend her free time in swish Indonesian hotels. Meanwhile a more grounded version of Alisa has to contend with mould growing on the walls of her London flat. Through carefully selected Instagram photos, using wigs, outfits and locations to tell a subtle narrative, these Alisas live out wildly different online lives. This is explained as a social experiment: to see which personality/haircut/class gets the most 'likes' - to blossom into a true social media butterfly.

Not knowing what's real plays on the nerves. Even when sat across from Alisa I wasn't sure if I was chatting to 'her' or some lightly fictionalised character she was playing for my benefit (the presence of books 'on acting' don't help. This mild paranoia grew when I glanced to my left to see a printed copy of my recent Facebook status updates. A Truman Show shiver of worry came over me, as I walked around the gallery I began to second-guess each person there. Surely that 1950s looking blonde with the selfie stick must be part of the exhibition? Am I talking to strangers or disguised friends? After all there is a large selection of wigs and costumes at the back... Am I being played for a mug? Should I play along with the fiction?

This whirlwind of worrying thoughts, only slightly smoothed over by a couple of glasses of wine, gets to the heart of LikeMe Labs. Consciously or unconsciously we all create these online persona; presenting an idealised, edited and censored simulacra of reality for public consumption. That we only show the positive stuff on Facebook is pretty far down the dishonesty scale, but the porkies really ramp up once we get into the realm of online dating.

If our Facebook persona are heightened versions of ourselves, our online data profiles present the person we'd desperately love to be: cultured, beautiful, interesting and personable. Working as our own. dedicated, PR team we cast this perfect 'us' into the online-dating pond like a worm on a hook, hoping against hope that not only will someone bite, but that person will forgive our various lies and accept us for who we 'really' are.

LikeMe Labs shaves back the self-deception and exposes the bones of this process, the walls festooned with confused men never quite sure whether they're talking to a real person or not. Gradually you pick up on the narratives - in particular the relationship between Robert and Alisa. This comes to a confusing head when Robert turns up and (apparently unexpectedly) launches into an improvised beatboxing session for Alisa's benefit. Later there's a pretty funny gynaecological monologue (not by Robert), but I couldn't quite work out where that fit into the night. Again, the lines between what we play out on the comfort of our phones and laptops is wrenched into the real world.

LikeMe Labs turned out to be an unexpectedly dislocating and slightly scary experience. The night is full of meaty questions, the true implications of which only dawn on you during sleepless late nights. Has the age of social media transformed us all into enormous narcissists? What is a person's 'true' personality? If everyone we meet is 'in character' then who the hell are we even talking to?

This all adds up to a work that's less installation and more psychological study, the internal monologue of each individual that attends as important as whatever's nailed to the walls. I do wonder how effective it'd be without a bunch of people milling around to exchange ideas with, but any exhibition that leaves me with a knotted head full of conflicting ideas is definitely doing something right.

LikeMe Labs is at Arebyte Gallery until 20th March 2015.

Saturday, June 30, 2012

'100% London' at the Hackney Empire, 29th June 2012

Saturday, June 30, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

'100% London' is a theatre of demographics and statistics, a theatre of the multitude. If it does tell a story, then it is one of the city's passions, pain and pride. This production, by company Rimini Protokoll, features 100 participants chosen in a kind of daisy-chain. One person asks another, and they ask a friend and so on. Eventually we end up with a cross-section of the populace, a tumultuous mix of ages, races, religions, genders, sexualities, nationalities and politics.

This blog is called 'London City Nights', but I haven't really had an opportunity before this to talk much about the city as a whole. I love this city, I love everything about it - even the stuff I hate, if that makes any sense. If I could choose to live anywhere in the world, I'd live in London. Someone in this production comments: "London isn't like the rest of England, it's different". To someone who hasn't been sucked into the whirlpool this sounds like a cliche Londoncentric attitude, a prime example of the viewpoint that life ends at the M25. But it's true. London really isn't like the rest of the country: it's more dynamic, more open-minded, more flexible and, somewhat ironically given the cliches, more welcoming. This year, for better or worse, London is in the spotlight. The advertising seems to focus on spectacle - all swooping helicopter shots over the thrusting phallic landmarks and giant bells clanging over it. Ordinary Londoners are notable by their absence. So this show seeks to redress the balance - taking the collective psychic subconsciousness of the London public and throwing it onto stage.

Harnessing this sea of opinion and history is necessarily a messy affair. The show is rough around the edges and there is a distinct lack of glamour. We open with a lone man on stage who tells us the recent history of the Hackney Empire, and how he used to play bingo here. He looks a little nervous and talks haltingly. The stage looks enormous around him, and I feel a pang of sympathy for him, while at the same time hoping that the rest of this performance isn't going to be this awkward. He tells us of his life, about his emigration from Jamaica in the 60s and his subsequent life in Hackney. As we get an understanding of the man he introduces another person, who tells us something about themselves, they introduce another friend to us and so on. We meet 100 people in this manner. They're not rushed and seem to get as long as they want to speak to us. Some of them briefly announce their name and move on in moments, some of them tell us fairly long anecdotes about their past. You might think that 100 people seems like a lot - how can we be expected to meet so many people without it all becoming a bit samey? But there is always some spark that sets them apart from the crowd, something that makes them stick in our minds.

After we've been introduced to everyone we move onto the meat of the matter - where they're quizzed about their viewpoints, asked questions as varied as "Do you think the NHS should be privatised?", "Are women and men treated equally?" and "Do you think Mandarin Chinese should be taught in schools?" The crowd divide themselves according to their answers, forming and reforming into two groups showing their opinion. There is a camera high above the stage, and the view from above is projected onto a circular screen above the stage. It neatly transforms the movement of the people on stage into something diagrammatical, allowing us to see the people impersonally, as points of data on a chart.

The split viewpoint is used in a number of interesting ways in the performance, it's frequently visually arresting - particularly when the crowd is asked some personal questions they may prefer to be anonymous for. The lights go down and they're asked to raise their mobile phone screens up to the camera if they're answering 'yes'. The result picture looks like a view from a telescope, tiny balls of light shimmering in the darkness. It's quite beautiful, and if the theme of this show is to highlight the beauty of a person in the crowd then symbolically showing them as stars shining in the night sky is a wonderful way of doing it.

Another wonderful sequence is when they ask the crowd to mime what they're doing at different times of the day. It's a hilarious way of showing the 24 hour nature of London, a city that never sleeps. As people drop off to sleep some are still partying away, and as they rise for work others fall asleep. Once again it divides the crowd yet still allows us to view them as one organism working in harmony.

As we see more of their opinions we begin to become surprised by some of the participants. You can't help but form your own picture of their lives and how they think, it's easy to try and fit them into your own stereotypes and then it's strangely uplifting when they defy them. Who would have thought that this sweet looking old lady spent 4 years in prison for trying to smuggle a bus full of marijuana through Europe? That the fashionable and slightly self conscious teenage girl with hair over one eye has apparently experienced some kind of military service? It's an excellent demonstration of the maxim that people are not pre-packaged bundles of opinions and ideas; just because someone believes in x does not mean they will automatically believe in y.

Later in the show more personal questions are asked, and we seem to peer into these people's lives in a more intimate manner. People come forward who've survived cancer and stand together. A group who've suffered from depression. People who've thought about killing themselves. Never does one person stand alone during any of these, and it's somehow comforting that no matter what you've been through there is someone who can empathise with you. There is one sequence where they are asked to come forward "If they think they will be dead within 10 years?". A small group of people stand at the front of the stage, almost aggressively confronting us with the nature of their confessed fragile mortality. The next question is asked "Who thinks they'll be dead within 30 years?", the crowd grows larger, the question is asked again this time for 70 years, and finally 120. Everyone stands on stage, even the young children. It's a weird moment seeing these small children acknowledging their own mortality.

There are some flaws with this performance - they change things up frequently to keep things fresh, but it is hard to get away from the fact that this is essentially a series of questions asked for two hours and occasionally during some of the less illuminating questions it becomes a bit dull. But usually within a few minutes some odd statistical quirk or funny anecdote will set you thinking again (Wow, a lot of people seem to support Britain becoming a republic. Hm.). There's also a bit towards the end of the show where they ask the audience if they can take a minute without nothing happening on stage. Maybe it's because the night before I watched a similar scene and can already fully appreciate how long a minute can feel. Either way, while admittedly an interesting exercise in time perception, it is also pretty boring. Fortunately this is a blip, the show generally holds your attention throughout and you're constantly being shown interesting 'data' to evaluate.

At times, nearly everyone finds the sheer size of London intimidating. They sense themselves being chipped away by the multitude, losing their individuality and becoming just another face in a huge crowd. When travelling in rush hour on the tube its hard not to feel like a product, something being shuttled around an uncaring system, a rat running madly around a maze with no escape or reward at the end. This show is an experience that cures that malaise. It forces you to come to realisation that everyone around you has their own story, personality, or something to set them apart from the crowd, and that you do too. It'd be very easy for a production like this to take a fiercely anti-individualistic position, and treat this crowd purely as a symbolic representation of the 7.5 million inhabitants of London. They're not, they're defined strongly as individuals in their own right, and by extension so is the audience.

This year the fear of your personality being dissolved into the masses has another level: London itself is under attack. London's individuality is under siege, people having their homes transformed into missile platforms, bulldozers clearing space for brushed aluminium Olympic venues and hamburger stands. If there ever was a time for a production to unambiguously say that the power of London is in its citizens it is now.

Sunday, June 24, 2012

'66 Minutes in Damascus' at Shoreditch Town Hall, 23rd June 2012

Sunday, June 24, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

(promo picture for the play, the rest of the pictures on this page are news photos from Syria)

'66 Minutes in Damascus', written and directed by Lucien Bourjeily, is probably the most intense and terrifying theatrical experience I've ever been through in my life. I'm writing this on the last day of performance, so I feel somewhat comfortable spoiling things, this is a production that works so much better when you don't know exactly what's going to happen going in.

I had only read a very vague description of what was to come, but I'd gathered that it was an interactive theatre experience that would try and show me a little of what life is like in contemporary Damascus as the Assad regime cracks down on the populace with the might of the Syrian Armed Forces while the Free Syrian Army retaliates. I was a little concerned that this would be a kind of vicarious warzone tourism for Westerners. I didn't want something that was just going to shake me up with a series of loud bangs and flashes to give me some sensory overload, a kind of a theme park, rollercoaster view of the conflict. I needn't have worried, as while this did leave me in a kind of wired, adrenaline overload, it did it while presenting a frighteningly plausible simulation of an experience in an Assad regime detention centre.

The premise is that myself and seven other participants are Western tourists that have come to Damascus to sightsee. As we arrive at Shoreditch Town Hall we're led into a hotel lobby. There's posters advertising the sights of the city, and small cups of tea to drink. A very pleasant receptionist takes our details and as people fill into the room she tells us about the sights we'll be seeing in the city, how we'll have to take off our shoes in order to enter the Umayyad Mosque and to be careful at the market and so on. Eventually our friendly bus driver arrives, and we follow him through the building as he teaches us a few basic Arabic phrases. As he jokes with us we are led down some stairs, and then out of the corner of our eyes we see a man with an AK47 assault rifle by the stairs.

Before we have time to process what's going on everyone starts screaming in Arabic, and we're shoved against the wall with our hands above our heads over our heads. All around us men are shouting orders in Arabic, and one by one we have black bags placed over our heads, blocking out all light. It's astonishing how terrifying and disconcerting this is. Even with the mental safety net of knowing I'm in Shoreditch at a theatrical performance, I still find my legs and hands shaking involuntarily. We're roughly led outside and into a van, where our hands are buckled down between our legs and people beat the outside of the menacingly. We're driven around while Syrian music is blared at us, and the van rocks over rough terrain. It's difficult to tell where we are going, and the van drives for a sufficiently long time as to completely disorientate us. It stops, and still blind and hooded we're marched, hands on each other's shoulders into a room where the hoods are pulled off.

We seem to be in some Syrian Army commander's office. He sits behind a desk as we line up in front of him, an ominous picture of Assad bearing down from the wall behind him (his picture is omnipresent throughout the performance). He checks our names against a list, and informs us that one our group is a journalist and has 'illegally' sent a report out of the country. He's going to find out which one. He then threateningly lectures us about Western intervention in the Middle East, repeating a popular saying; "before there was one Saddam Hussein, now there are millions of Saddam Husseins'. He quizzes us as to whether our system of government is much better than his. It's valid political commentary, even though it's being used to justify the murderous Assad regime in Syria. It's not like we can debate this guy though, we've been too shocked into submission to argue. When he pointed at me and asked my name, I was surprised by how shaky and nervous my response was. Again, even though I 'knew' it wasn't real, apparently my body didn't.

Following this lecture we're marched down a corridor and made to stand arms in the air and heads up. Also lying in the corridor is a beaten and bloody man under a sheet. He desperately asks us to contact his mother and let her know that he's here. I find myself somewhat paranoid and avoid talking to him, how do I know he's not some plant put here to get information out of me? Very quickly you slip into a paranoid and somewhat placid state - I found myself having Stockholm Syndrome-like thoughts of pleasing the people that were ordering me around. You find yourself doing what they say, marching, running, standing against the wall, without thinking.

We're next led into a darkened room where the door is shut. A shambling, mumbling presence creeps up behind us and whispers in our ear. It's another prisoner, who tells us we've been here for 20 years. He asks where we're from, and when we respond Britain, he says we're 20 years too late. This moment in the darkened cell with the somewhat deranged prisoner is sort of a moment of downtime for us. He leads us around his cell and tells us about his life and political opinions, talking to a sock puppet which represents Assad. The slight slackening of the psychological pressure on us makes this feel a little more expository than what we've seen so far. There is a rattling at the door as the chains shake, and we scuttle instinctively back to our submissive position against the wall in order to avoid being singled out for abuse.

We're then lead down a corridor to another prison cell, this one much smaller, but better lit. We're in the cell with two women, who have been renamed Muhammed and Ahmed, so the other prisoners don't realise they're being held captive with women. They tell us about their lives, one has been arrested for writing an English language blog, and the other has a husband that refused to fire against civilians. They explain how they pass the time by playing games with each other and arguing. The subject of armed resistance vs peaceful demonstration is debated, with the girls taking opposite positions. I'm drawn into the debate, and say that peaceful demonstration can only go so far, and that violent resistance is justified when the state uses indiscriminate lethal force against the populace. She responds by saying that she fears a civil war will erupt, and I point out that the situation in Syria is already a civil war. A lot of people are going to die no matter when happens, and they may as well be the authoritarian child-murderers that are the muscle behind Assad. I consider myself to have a very cursory understanding of the current situation in Syria, so I'm not exactly on comfortable ground debating this. Before too long though, the guards are back, and we're marched down the corridor into the 'torture' room.

The room features a dentist's chair, and variety of sinister looking tools sit on racks behind it. Pools of blood lie on the floor around it, as does an ominously sparking car battery. One person is singled out to be tortured, and as 'luck' would have it, it's me. I'm strapped to the dentist's chair, and everyone else is led out. Now it's just me and the torturer, who barks questions at me and accuses me of being a Jew. He shines a bright light in my eyes, and blows long plumes of cigarettes smoke into the room. Then he gets called away for a moment, and I'm left on my own in the room. I decide "to hell with this", and escape. I slip my hands free of the restraints and peek around the door to see if anyone's watching in the corridor. No-one is. I quickly work out a plan. There are two doors opposite the interrogation room, but I don't know what's behind them, and worry that they might lead to dead ends. In the end I settle for squeezing myself into the space behind the door to the torture room, and plan to close the door on the interrogator and run off towards the exit.

As I'm hiding behind the door, heart pumping and trying to be as quiet as possible I reflect on whether I'm supposed to be trying to escape or not? I mean, I wasn't restrained particularly effectively, is this what they want me to be doing? Is this a psychological test of my submissiveness - to see whether I will do what they tell me to, even though a way out is right in front of me? It strikes me that this 'escape' attempt isn't really telling me much about the current situation in Syria, it's more allowing me to act out a Hollywood style prison break and fuel some heroic masturbatory fantasy of mine. If I was really being held in a torture room by the Syrian Army, would I really try and escape? This is after all, a piece of theatre, and I know there are going to be no real consequences to my escape. Even so, my heart is thumping like a drum, and I'm holding my breath as I hear the guard coming back down the corridor to my hiding spot. As he turns the corner into the cell I try and close the door on him and run away. He chases me, and quickly I find myself cornered in a dead end and surrender. A hood is placed over my head again, and once more I'm lead down a corridor while being prodded with clubs. I am asked if I 'love Assad', and still flush with heroic feelings I 'bravely' respond 'No!' repeatedly. Things go quiet, and after a while I take my hood off and look around.

I'm back surrounded by the rest of the group, who mostly still have their hoods on. The smiling face of the theatre assistant greets me, it's over, it felt like a lot longer than 66 minutes.. Everyone seems shaken up by their experience. I'm still jittery, hyped up on adrenaline with my hands and legs shaking a little. Stepping out into the Shoreditch nightlife feels incredibly bizarre after this, and strange paranoid and excitable thoughts fill my head for hours afterwards.

This is a somewhat difficult piece of theatre to analyse. It really is intense and terrifying, but ultimately it is also entertaining. The stated aim is to raise awareness of what is happening in Assad's prisons and detention centres, but even though this feels realistic, deep down I know what is actually happening must be infinitely worse and infinitely more psychologically destructive. It succeeded in making me think that I could empathise with the experiences of those interrogated, but this must necessarily be an illusion. How could I look someone in the eye who'd actually been through this sort of treatment and tell them that I'd paid £15 and gone to the centre of trendy London to put myself through a simulation of what they'd been forced through? This was after all, my choice.

But on the other hand the programme does assure us that the events we've been through are based on testimony from former political detainees, and admits that they can only "modestly portray only a small fraction of the dreadfulness and absurdity of what political detainment in Syria really is under the Assad regime." Putting audiences through this simulation of very real events to raise awareness about what is going on is a noble aim, the more people outraged at the way the Assad regime is treating its citizenry the better. But, it seems other than awareness that there is almost nothing that we, the audience members can do about this incredibly complicated situation. It's a worrying feeling of impotence, one which Adam Curtis has summarised as "Oh Dearism".

It is precisely this kind of impotent feeling that makes this piece of theatre somewhat problematic for me. Is it worth transforming people's very real traumatic experiences of psychological torture into theatre to inform Western audiences? It feels a little exploitative for me to get an adrenaline fix by dipping my toe into the horrors of contemporary Syria. Especially since, at times I felt like I was acting out my personal revolutionary fantasies about resisting torture by an authoritarian regime and attempting escape. While it was exciting at the time, in retrospect it feels somewhat like using what is horrifying reality for people right now to stroke my own ego.

As a piece of theatre it is stunningly effective, convincing and something that'll stay with me for a very long time. It's a triumph of disturbingly convincing set design and acting so realistically threatening that you feel a genuine sense of malevolence from the actors playing the soldiers, and very real desperation from the prisoners. Even so, despite all this acting skill and expert staging my reaction to the situation in Syria is still much along the lines of "Oh dear, this is awful", rather than being given any kind of constructive framework to be able to effect any kind of change in Syria. I've been made aware of what is going on, but is that enough?

Saturday, June 23, 2012

'LUPA 10' behind James Campbell House, 22nd June 2012

Saturday, June 23, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

LUPA (Lock Up Performance Art) is a tricky thing to pin down in a number of ways. It's a series of performance art events that take place outside a row of garages at the back of a block of flats in Bethnal Green. I don't really have the necessary critical framework to be able to tell whether the performance art pieces are succeeding or failing, so I find it quite hard to review and analyse at times. It's hard to tell at times whether the audience is supposed to be laughing, or if this is annoying the performance artist and ruining the mood of their set. Semi-guerilla abstract art like this runs the constant risk of toppling over into navel-gazing "aren't we clever" reflexive cynicism.

Satirising East London art 'happenings' has become almost cliche, and I think the organisers recognise the danger of self-parody, so the atmosphere around LUPA is relaxed, informal and quite unpretentious. There is a bin with ice and beer in it, and a small bar being run from the boot of a car serving drinks. Everyone's friendly, and it seems at pains to be as inclusive as abstract performance art taking place behind some flats can possibly be.

Kate Mahony (with cool personalised van)

The first performer was Kate Mahony. Her piece consisted of loading cardboard boxes into a van. That's pretty much it. She was wearing a paint-spattered boiler suit, and opened the titular lock-up, which was full of cardboard boxes, some marked with the numbers of different LUPA events. There were maybe 100 boxes in the garage, and we watched as she loaded every one into the van. The simple repetition, and the punchline (her driving away in the van with the driver without a word) we could see coming a mile away, and she got quite a bit of laughter from the audience for her sheer audacity in making us sit through this. I half wondered if this is a sort of audience-mocking "you'll sit through anything" Godard type point. I also wondered if this was some complicated crowd psychology Zimbardo/Milgram style test. Would anyone step up from the mass of people to help her with her task - is this a condemnation of the audience that we are standing there taking a certain sadistic pleasure in watching her work. Is she laughing at us, or are we laughing at her? A slightly more literal interpretation is that as this is the last LUPA event until September it might be a symbolic packing up for the summer and driving away. But then in this case surely it'd be the last performance rather than the first?

Colm Clarke

Up next was Colm Clarke with a visual demonstration of Marx's theory of value commodity. The value of a commodity, according to Marxist theory (and bear in mind this is me flying by the seat of my pants political sciencewise) is the combination of different types of value that it has, labour value, exchange value and use/utility value. Clarke demonstrated this theory by buying 10 cans of Red Bull from a nearby newsagent, before pouring them into a dirty bucket. He thus demonstrated how physical cash, which is entirely exchange value can be converted into Red Bull, which has labour value, use value and exchange value and finally how merely changing the container in which the the drink is in strips it of all value and turns it into a noxious substance to be actively avoided. I think that's the basics of it anyway. It was an effective demonstration of the theory, but presented in this way it felt a little too much like a classroom demonstration to be totally effective as a piece of performance art.

What was more interesting about it was the effect that the performance had on its surroundings, particular in buying the Red Bull. One thing that LUPA does very well is transform the area around it into a kind of liminal space, where the boundaries between performer vs audience, audience vs general public and performance space vs public space break down. One thing I've noticed at the LUPA events I've been to is that you generally get very confused people watching from the periphery trying to work out what's going on, and why this large group of people are standing around a garage applauding. In Clarke's piece, the straightforward act of buying the Red Bull sucked the shop, it's employees and the people inside the shop into an art space that I'm pretty sure they weren't expecting. I suspect most people's reaction is "who are those group of weirdos?!", but some reaction is better than nothing. Recontextualising humdrum activities as art is something that I generally enjoy anyway.

The end of Clarke's performance was notable in two ways. Once he'd filled his bucket with Red Bull he began to swing it around his head. Possibly this was leading to a moment of blinding clarity in a demonstration of Marxist theory but we will never know as the bucket handle broke, sending 10 cans of Red Bull flying through the air towards some poor LUPA attendees. Fortunately no-one got drenched in the sticky, sugary stuff. I imagine no matter how chilled out you are, getting soaked in Red Bull might put a bit of a downer on your night. It was certainly a dramatic end though.

Whoops.

In between Clarke and the final act, Jordan McKenzie stood up to make a short announcement and while he was doing so a woman walked furiously up behind him, smashed a wine bottle over his head and walked away. The crowd was in shock. I had always assumed that the local residents were tolerant of this sort of thing happening, but apparently they've got more seri.. oh wait, it was just another performance art piece! The wine bottle was a sugar, stage bottle! I'm not sure that this had that much artistic meaning behind other than giving the crowd a nice surprise and keeping us on our toes. It was a good shock though, and nicely set up the final act.

Aaron Williamson

Aaron Williamson's act was the most physically daring. He was dressed all in black, and climbed over the roofs of the garages while holding a big white sheaf, a hunting knife precariously poised on a long pole, and two planks. The performance concluded with him 'skiing' (or rather shuffling on home-made skiis) down the roof and jumping off onto a pouffe that broke his fall. Watching this felt like you were watching a live version of one of those Youtube videos where someone badly hurts themselves. There were so many possible things that could have gone wrong, the knife could have fallen on his head, he could have fallen backwards off the roof, he could have fallen through the roof, he could have missed the pouffe, or tripped and smashed his face on the concrete. The very nature of LUPA seems to imply that there aren't going to be that many safety checks done in advance, so watching this made everyone very nervous and there were a few gasps when, for example, the knife slipped off the pole. Maybe it was just an illusion of danger rather the real thing, but it was a damn realistic illusion.

Note the large knife held over his head.

Walking along the roofs of the garages was just another way in which LUPA recontextualises its downbeat, concrete pre-fab surroundings into a performance art space, and I think this is a pretty noble goal. While London can be an astoundingly beautiful city, there are also miles and miles of drab concrete misery, and it's nice to something colourful, imaginative and artistic reclaiming a corner of it, if only for an hour every month.

Monday, June 4, 2012

'Uncle Vanya in Languages' by CaliandRock at Camden People's Theatre, 3rd June 2012

Monday, June 4, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

Carlo Bellanovo as Uncle Vanya

I have rarely felt such a sudden combination of confusion and dread as when I realised that this play wasn't in English. Ah crap, have I gone to a Russian language play by mistake? Not for the first time I found myself wishing I'd done just a tiny bit of research before turning up to a theatre. I'm generally of the opinion that the less you know about something before you see it, the more honest your analysis. However, being faced with a play where, from the look of things I won't be able to understand any of the dialogue, detailed analysis seems like a tall order. To make things just that little bit harder I've never read any Chekhov or seen any plays of his before, so I don't even have the crutch of knowing the outline of the plot.

But as the play progresses I begin to pick up on things. What I had assumed was Russian turns out to be a panoply of European languages. Ah-ha! I haven't gone to a foreign language play by mistake - it's a stylistic choice. Experimental theatre I can deal with, and even though I remain somewhat confused I start to feel like I've got a chance of puzzling this out. I start to pick out each individual language and try and decipher what I can. Eventually a character speaking English arrives on stage. I hang on his every word like a drowning man clinging to a piece of driftwood.

From the off it is clear that this is a production that requires its audience to do some mental heavy lifting. The night was cold and wet, and apparently Londoners have got other things to do than go to an experimental Chekhov play. There are about as many people on stage as there are in the audience. I sit in the front row, my nose right up against the fourth wall. In the absence of language, I find myself having to work out what is going on from other cues.

I begin to analyse the character's costumes, and soon note a unifying theme. They characters, save one, are all dressed in black with one colour accented. For example, Uncle Vanya wears black and a yellow tie, and Helena wears crimson stiletto heels and red lipstick. The characters in the play all seem caught up in their own internal miseries and tragedies, is the colour scheme to show that they're more similar than they realise? Does it show that despite what the characters might think, there are only minor differences between them. The only character to break this theme is Sofia, who is dressed in pure white. Is this a virginal symbol? In the absence of language I have to invent my own colour theories to explain the character's relationships with each other.

Can Orhan as 'Mikhail' and Daniela Caliandro as 'Helena'

Even through the language barrier, I can appreciate the strength of the performances. It's somehow relaxing and meditative to watch long sequences where I have no idea what is being said. I find myself forced to focus on body language, tone of voice, eye contact and facial expressions rather than dialogue. It's strangely liberating to free yourself from trying to interpret language, like you're giving a different part of your brain a workout. Once I'd settled into the rhythm of the play I found that, oddly, I was able to empathise with some of the actors much more than a lot of other English-speaking plays that I've seen recently.

By necessity I found myself paying more attention to body language than I would normally have. There are subtle levels of positioning that I picked up on, certain characters seem to pose themselves in distinctive ways. For example Mikhail (Can Orhan) alternates between gallant heroic chest-out style poses and more crumpled and desperate poses depending on whose company he is in. It's clear the body language is one of the things that the company wants to the audience to pay attention to, and with this focus you might expect there to be a plethora of huge, overly theatrical movements. It's a credit to the company that they're not, and a lot of the important character moments are restrained and subtle

Some of what I considered the best character moments weren't spotlighted at all, and happened while the audience's attention was 'supposed' to be somewhere else on stage. My favourite was when Sonya places her head in Marina's lap and lets the old nurse dab away her tears. If the play had been in English my attention would have been elsewhere, and I would have missed that small, but well-acted and important moment. All of the cast acquit themselves very well, and everyone seems to have interpreted their roles with a great deal of thought. Having said that, there were a few performances and moments that stood out in particular.

One moment in particular was during a monologue by Sonya (Emilia Ufir). She fixed me with a full on confrontational stare for about a minute, it was a hugely effective and uncomfortably intense moment. I didn't want to look away and felt a bit like a deer in the headlights. It's the kind of experience that I go to the theatre for, and it pretty much knocked the wind out of me. I've been to a lot of productions in enormous auditoriums lately, and you just wouldn't get that kind of piercing interaction there. A similar moment to this was the close of the first half of the play, when Helena (Daniela Caliandro) sings 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'. This happened right in front of me, and was, again a nicely intimate and emotionally honest moment.

Another outstanding performance was the central role of Uncle Vanya (Carlo Bellanova). The actor has a marvellously dramatic mane of long curly hair, making it look somewhat like he's wearing a periwig. It gives him a feral, unkempt air, in stark contrast to the other characters who have much more restrained and naturalistic styles. He is the character who goes through the widest range of emotions, and it's a little scary to watch him at the extremes. There is a great moment where he writhes on the floor in the grip of infatuation. it seems unselfconscious, and perfectly sells the desperation and loneliness of the character. Another is when he bursts into a scene wielding a gun and shoots at Aleksandr. His screaming and wailing is disturbing to watch, as is his emotional collapse soon after.

Emilia Ufir as 'Sonya' and Daniela Caliandro as 'Helena'

Despite all these positive qualities, there were a few problems with the multilingual format of the play. A synopsis of the plot was provided on the programme, which was on our seat as we entered the auditorium. As the audience enters, Marina (Matveevna) is already on stage and in character. I was not sure if the play had already started, and it felt somehow rude to read through the programme while someone is already acting on stage. I read it during the interval, and in retrospect it would have been helpful to know who was who and what was going on throughout the first half. Even with this synopsis (and after watching the play) I still don't really think I have a grasp on the plot and although I could pick up on which characters are feeling which emotions I still don't really know why. For example, Mikhail, the doctor, has some kind of plot arc involving planting trees, and being able to metaphorically (or maybe actually as far as I know) see 1000 years into the future. I didn't really have any idea what this had to do with anything. I can just about tie it thematically to Aleksandr's threat to sell off the country estate, but this was just one of many plot points that seemed to hang freely without any connection to the rest of what I thought the narrative was. It seemed that concessions were made in that important moments and soliloquies were in English, but again, these sequences seemed more like free-floating pieces of standalone drama that were hard to tie into an over-arching narrative.

I respect the idea and philosophy behind the performance, but if you come into it 'cold' it is very difficult to mentally put the pieces of the puzzle in the right places. As a result, even though the interactions between the characters are very strong and all of the acting is great, it is hard to get genuinely emotionally invested in what will happen. I'm sure it'd be a completely different experience if I was familiar with Chekhov's work, or spoke multiple languages but I'm not and I don't, so I have to review it from this perspective.

Aside from this, there are a few minor issues. One is that the walls of the theatre are not particularly soundproof, and throughout the play, the audience hears fairly loud traffic noises from the street outside. At one point, after Vanya attempts suicide an ambulance drove past, sirens blaring. It felt strangely serendipitous. Also in sound terms was that someone's camera kept making a loud bleeping sound throughout the play, which was a bit distracting. You'd think they could have set it to silent out of consideration for both the cast and audience.

I'm glad I came out for this, and despite my initial reservations I found myself enjoying it immensely. It was a tough mental workout though, and I had to work at not letting my mind wander and keep my focus on body language and facial expressions. I don't think it was a very good introduction to the works of Chekhov, but as a piece of experimental theatre it was definitely worthwhile. This is, to say the least, an ambitious first piece of work for a company, and I hope it means they're going to make a name for themselves with more experiments as interesting and compelling as this one.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Daisies (1966) - directed by Vera Chytilová

Sunday, May 13, 2012 - by londoncitynights · - 0 Comments

"If everything's going bad in this world, then we're going bad as well!"

This 1960s feminist Czech New Wave film is a refreshing bonk upside the head.

Daisies is a madcap explosion of colour and motion, inescapably psychedelic in tone and sharing DNA with the kind of playful toying with the establishment shown in Richard Lester's A Hard Days Night. But while the Beatles were poking fun at the British class system and establishment, Daisies lets two anarchic 17 year old girls loose on the authoritarian Communist government of the Czech Republic.

The film-makers that compromised the Czech New Wave stated that their aim was "to make the Czech people collectively aware that they were participants in a system of oppression and incompetence which had brutalized them all." Their artistic style was influenced by the French New Wave in editing style and they Italian neo-realist convention of employing non-actors to populate their films.

Vera Chytilová's tactic seems to be to throw every cinematic technique at the wall and see what sticks. The film stock changes within scenes, coloured tints take over the screen seemingly at random, during strong motion motion the colours separate out in an acid-tinged rainbow. At times the film itself seems to be tearing itself apart in the astonishingly beautiful train sequence, and the mindboggling cut-up sequence where the girls first 'cut' each others bodies apart, and then cut apart the very film itself.

The two lead characters, Marie 1 and Marie 2, are giggly, bouncy and impulsive teenagers. Throughout the film they alternate between a kind of exaggerated childlike innocence in public and a more introspective private persona when in each other's company. The notion of shifting identities and para-personalities is brought up early - one of the Marie's places a posy upon her head and announces that she is "being a virgin". The characters seem to spend their time fleecing old men for free meals (the film is oddly fixated on food) and lounging around in their flat. They begin the film sitting stiffly and doll-like, their movements producing loud creaks on the soundtrack. They decide that if the world's gone bad and has become corrupt then they may as well be bad too. Makes sense to me.

There are feminist themes coursing through this film's veins. This patriarchal society doesn't know what's hit it when the girls show up. Reactions from the male bystanders range from horror, outrage or even being literally unable to perceive them due to their outre nature. They clearly have no need for men other than to manipulate them for their own amusement. The girls get thrown out of bars, brush off drippy lovestruck boys and lighthearted but pointedly slice up phallic objects. Things tend to become liquid and malleable around the girls, time and physics seem to go on holiday at whim, they make the world their own, and everyone else has to deal with it.

The climax of the film is when the Maries stumble across an extravagant banquet presumably laid out for party dignitaries. They creep around, carefully tasting various dishes before inevitably falling into a free-for-all foodfight, and end covered in food and joyously swinging on the chandelier. In a utilitarian Communist society destroying food purely for the hell of it seems like an especially symbolic transgressive act.

If you're going to take on the establishment you couldn't ask for two finer leads. Striking from what is seemingly a position of weakness is one of the best ways to penetrate the armour of your target. The state can engage and handily dispose of a narrative about an angry masculine protagonist engaging with them on ideological terms, but is far less equipped to deal with two 17 year old girls cheekily giggling and thumbing their noses at them. It's very telling that when the film was banned after the Soviet invasion end of the Prague Spring, the only reason they could give was that the film promoted 'wasting food'.

I'd like to think that nearly everyone would enjoy this film. It's beautiful, the two Maries are insanely charismatic and it doesn't outstay its welcome, clocking in 74 minutes.

You can watch the whole thing here. I'd highly recommend you give up an hour or so of your time to it. Let me know what you think.