December
29th – I’ve had some interesting experiences working with what one
might term left-field theatre companies, certainly back in the 80’s. These were
mainly in the small-scale sector of the business as this is mostly where
experimental work first happens before it’s taken up by the main-stream and
posited as original work by the London-centric creators. Four instances will
suffice…stop me if I’ve told you any of these already.
1)
What must be classed as the most startling opening to a show I’ve ever seen was
as follows:
Blackout – Loud Rock Music – Fade out
music to a distant performance of Mozart’s clarinet concerto - Lights up –
Enter U/S/R a man wearing a belted and strapped straight-jacket and ball-gag.
To the end of his cock was tied a white lanyard which gradually played out as
he moved further on stage until eventually there appeared a skateboard attached
to the other end on top of which was a portable CD player which was playing the
Mozart piece.
That’s
how you get an audiences’ attention.
2)
Top of the show, three ladies enter
U/S/C, two of them dressed as police women one as a prisoner. Within the first
thirty seconds the prisoner is stripped of her clothing and the two policewomen
begin to thrash her with whips and drench her in beer.
3)
A man dressed in penguin suit and clown
make-up with a sheathed sword on his belt enters S/L onto a pre-prepared circus
ring of sand. Ravel’s Bolero begins to play as, over the next 15 minutes and 50
seconds he places and lights over 200 candles round the ring leaving six gaps
at various intervals around the circle. From six boxes placed U/S he takes out
and places six, half life-size, painted Madonna’s, one in each gap in the
candles. He circles the ring on the inside and as the music reaches a crescendo
so his movements begin to quicken and become more frenzied until, at the
appointed time in the music he removes the sword from its sheath and, whirling
like a dervish, beheads all six statues.
In
the silence that follows (stunned?) he replaces all the heads, re-boxes the
Madonna’s, douses all the candles with a silver snuffer…then the music kicks in
and the routine is repeated…and again…and again.
4)
Single O/H spot light fades up to
illuminate a huge silver serving dish. Two butlers enter U/S/C and remove the
lid to reveal a fruit-covered lady. As she begins to eat the fruit it is
discovered she is naked…and all the fruit is not immediately visible.
Most
theatre companies working in the small-scale sector have greater licence to
push the boundaries of what some would call good taste, and I have to say that
probably all of my best theatrical moments have happened at this street-end of
theatrical production where original performances leave you speechless and
change your life forever or radical re-workings of tired old standards that
make you want to revisit the playwright’s other work, many of these
performances being still very much a part of me and my informed thinking even
after 30+ years. I think what helped in a roundabout way was having Mrs. Thatcher
and the Conservative Party holding power throughout the 80’s. People had a
figure they could play off’f and theatre writers and performers, as always,
were at the forefront of dissention and dissatisfaction with the Conservative
ideology and the careless regime they were living under. What gave these writers and practitioners the
right to say these things about the society we were living in and the
callousness of our political leaders towards the people they were supposed to
be caring for was that we were bearing the brunt of a Conservative government
hiving off chunks of services and industries that were once thought of as part
of the country’s infrastructure, the absolute necessities that the people had a
right to expect to be provided by their government. The essentials to life
(food, light, heat, health) that made it possible for them to go to work for
the good of the country and pay their taxes to help fund these essentials that
were being hived off to the government’s rich friends; here we were watching
the wholesale giveaway to greedy fuckers who are still reaping the benefit of
the gifts given by people who will never be in want.
This
was what gave rise to a theatre that highlighted the iniquities in their
society, gave it the right to say it and for once had the courage, instead of
blubbing, of saying;
Fuck You.
It
gave impetus to the Poll Tax riots and the breakdown of a previously
unequivocal servility once afforded the forces of law and order. Now, at last,
we fully understood that they were no better than us that, not to put a too
fine point on it, their shit stank too.
Music,
too, reflected this with punk developing into thrash metal and hardcore punk,
and many bands made their name by singing the anthems of the people.
Time
has rounded the sharp edges of that time and, from my own humble perspective,
much of theatre went soft as it succumbed to the lure of subsidy and overseas
tours paid for by the British Council, slipping easily into the city mentality
of bonuses and junkets without realising this is just what their political
masters wanted; they wanted them toothless, fat and sniping at each other as
they fought for crumbs from the big man’s table; that way they were less of a
threat, less of a rallying point for protest, less a focus for education on the
state of the nation. Now it seems all everybody wants is a mobile ’phone, a
Porsche and a big, fat pay-check. What doesn’t help either is listening to the
wank-statements of spoiled and unconnected arses trying to justify their
stupidity by claiming it’s all about the art.
Creed, an American band who seemed to garner what can only be described as mixed revues (my favourite concerning
their particular brand of music is;
…a combination of overwrought power-balladry and Christian-infused testosterone…
Nice; a little unkind but…still; nice)
But
they had a massive following of devoted fans. On this day in 2002 the lead
singer of Creed, one Scott Stapp, in
answer to a law suit brought by four disappointed fans claimed it wasn’t drink
or drugs that rendered him incapable of singing the lyrics to the band’s
well-established works. No. The reason he’d rolled around the stage mouthing
gibberish was because he was having;
…an artistic moment…
Sorry,
Mr. Stapp but that’s bollocks. These people in the alternative theatre world
take their work very seriously. That’s the sort of response that gives real
artists, even ones who behead Madonna mannequins, a bad name…
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