Shout out to NT Connections

"Because how often do we get to perform in a space like this?"
Drama teacher to their group, standing on the main stage at Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal.

I have just finished my second year of working as a Connections Director for the National Theatre Connections programme. On the third and final day of the festival, you get what can only be described as 'that third day of Glastonbury feeling', when everything becomes a bit blurry but your guard goes down so everything is brilliant.

The day after, riding the train home, I wanted to commit that feeling to paper.

And I also think you lot should pay more attention to the programme.

NT Connections runs annually. Here's how it works. Each year, the NT commission 10 new plays to be performed by young people (aged approx 13-20) for young audiences (although they often play very well to adult audiences also). The playwrights each year range from the up-and-coming to the more established and experienced to writers from other disciplines writing plays for the first time. This year, for example, I've overseen plays by Stef Smith, Cush Jumbo, Jamie Brittain, Ayub Khan Din, Elinor Cook, Ben Ockrent and Katie Douglas (and there's more plays included in this year's programme that are not in my particular festival). Some 270-odd youth theatres, schools and other educational groups join the nationwide Connections programme. They pick one of the commissioned plays to perform (or, more accurately, they make 2 or 3 choices and are given 1), and are then given the rights to perform this play a small number of times over the next 6 months.

The directors all come to London in September for Directors Weekend – organised into groups according to the play they will perform, they spend a day with the writer & a day receiving training in voice/movement etc. They usually begin rehearsals around November/December time. Around February/March, they must perform their play in their 'Home Venue'. This can be their school hall, a church hall, their local theatre, a local amateur dramatics theatre, anywhere. The audiences are usually made up of their friends and families – they range in size from 3 to 250. Think about this for a second: a new play written by a contemporary playwright for a decent sized audience in every corner of the UK. This is also when the companies are visited for the first time by a Connections Director. We watch the shows and we meet the companies in a private after-show Q&A. This bit is great: you learn their names for the first time, you chat about the funny, idiosyncratic games they have developed in their process, and you talk about the play and the performance. The young people will blow you away with their analysis of a play's themes, characters and how it all directly affects their lives (for example, a group of 16 year old girls in Alnwick getting all passionate about feminism, or a 15 year old boy in Camden telling you that, as a direct result of his experience in a play, he now actively stops his mates from using the word gay as a derogatory term).

Their creative choices are fascinating: released from the superego of 'what a lead artist wants you to do', they often make imaginative and brilliantly crackers staging choices. Stories about what xxxx company in xxxx town have done with xxxx play in xxxx year are part of Connections legend. And, on the other side of the coin, you see empty space stagings that place acting at their heart in the most brilliant way. These unfussy performances are very often remarkably powerful. The Connections Directors write an account of the show, along with 'suggested development notes'. Think of it like an artistic director going in to see a show in their theatre in previews. I saw 9 shows this year, and one ends up caring deeply about every single one of those companies.

In the Spring, each and every show transfers to a 'Partner Theatre' festival. These festivals take place at professional theatres around the country: from the Bush, Soho Theatre, artsdepot or the Tricycle in London to Northern Stage, Bristol Old Vic, Belfast Lyric and loads of others around the whole UK. The shows that we have seen at their Home Venue all transfer to a professional stage. They are given a professional technical rehearsal, and we make their shows look 100% amazing.

I'm just coming back from the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal, where it's been a full-on festival. There's been two or three shows a night in the main house for the past 3 days – all of which have gotten in and teched in a single day (hence the Glastonbury feeling). Last night was a good representation of the diversity of work: there was a phenomenally expressionistic and precise staging of Ayub Khan Din's 'The Edelweiss Pirates' by a theatre school based on the Isle of Man; a gloriously riotous performance of Stef Smith's 'Remote' by a state secondary school in Aberconwy where we kept the house lights on throughout, had the audience on-stage and allowed the characters & chorus to perform all over the auditorium; and a raw, furious production of Katie Douglas's 'Follow Follow' by a youth theatre from Dumfries that had the young audience weeping at its conclusion. Every show over the weekend has been characterful and unique. You hear a huge diversity of voices, of accents, of views and ideas, both off and on-stage. Many groups stayed more than one night to watch other shows to make a sizeable, youthful and excitable audience; there has been a party every night where they've eyed each other up and exchanged phone numbers; and there's been more drama games than I knew existed. There were so many tears last night when it was all over: even I got a bit emosh walking away from the theatre.

My point is that this is the theatre experience that I have enjoyed most throughout the whole year so far. I love it because it's full of heart: each company perform their one show to within an inch of their lives. They give it everything. Or if they don't or can't do this, they don't yet have the craft to hide their feelings about being on stage. You realise how eccentric the UK is; although our towns have become increasingly similar to one another in appearance over the past 60 years, you discover the deeply idiosyncratic souls in these different places through their youth theatre performance. And it's all beautiful. Truth flies off the stage and reverberates around the auditorium in every single performance. You couldn't capture the essence of these festivals by writing about concepts or interpretations, you could only say that each show is unpredictable, live, honest and real.

Off-stage, the young people all talk effortlessly about plays and about life. Some of them want to be actors or directors or technicians or producers, but more want to be historians or scientists or teachers or fishermen or journalists or I-don't-quite-know-yet. At these festivals they all form small, temporary communities. They show up and they support the shit out of each other. And they do all of this around art, around theatre, those things which we're finding ourselves having to justify over and over again at the moment. Connections is a vastly expensive programme for the NT. It is an expensive and time-consuming project for schools and youth theatres to engage in, at a time when young people are encouraged / instructed to study earlier and earlier for exams. (I've written a lot about the young people but MY GOD the teachers and the youth theatre leaders are incredible. That one teacher in a school who single-handedly keeps drama going. Or the youth theatre leader who can tell you all about each actor as a person in enormous detail and will proudly tell you all about what their previous students are now doing. Or the adult who drives the minibus back and forth every night, having to listen to the Wicked soundtrack for the 17^th time. These people are extraordinary.)

All the above challenges can feel enormous.  Of course there are frustrations and difficulties in a project as large as this one.  And then you look at young people having the time of their lives in and around a space created for art – you see them feeling and thinking and laughing and dancing and singing and loving and crying and playing and just learning how to live well - and you realise that that is the world in which you want to live. The world that created this festival right here. If you tried to take their theatre away from them, you'd have one big fucking fight on your hands. And I'd be right there, with them.

The NT Festival is in July. All 10 plays of 2015 will be performed over 5 nights in the Dorfman and the Olivier. They are performed by a selection of groups that represent the geographical and artistic diversity & excellence of the 2015 Connections Festival. Please come, it'll be a blast. But, if you want to experience the real thing, come to Kendal next year (or Newcastle or Plymouth or Eden Court or Salisbury or Finchley or Warwick or Norwich or Belfast or somewhere else in the UK).

Tomx

With love and respect to: Alnwick Playhouse Youth Theatre; Bishops High Chester; Brewery Youth Theatre Kendal; Dumfries Youth Theatre; Headington School Oxford; P&S Youth Company Isle of Man; Stephen Joseph Youth Theatre Scarborough; Winstanley College Wigan; Yew Tree Youth Theatre Wakefield; Ysgol Aberconwy. 

KEEP GOING. ALL OF YOU. KEEP GOING.  

22 things you might want to hear about making art (to read only when you've made some art today)

There was an opinion piece by Nell Frizzell (who replied to my tweet about it and seems like a decent person) on IdeasTap yesterday that irked me.  Normally I’d swear loudly, shrug and move on, but it somehow it stuck with me.  I’m still thinking about it the next day.  To me, it reified a couple of unhelpful ideas and myths about what it is to work as an artist today.  That it was published on IdeasTap, a hub for young and emerging artists, those of us who should be trying to shake things up, felt even more troubling.

So here we go.

If I can finish this in the length of the new White Lung record, and then get back to work, then that would be great.

Two disclaimers.

1) My experience is mostly in theatre.  I’ve extrapolated these experiences to encompass other artforms – to match the rhetoric of the original article – but each practice, I imagine, has its own customs and idiosyncrasies.  But I suspect that most of this will ring true.

2) These are all things that I believe right now.  But a lot of them are stolen from or influenced by things I’ve read or people I’ve talked to about this kind of thing.  I haven’t even written it yet, and I know for a fact that I’m going to owe a debt to Action Hero’s ‘How to make a living as an artist', Sacha Wares, Clare Lizzimore and Simon Stephens.

So.  

Here are 22 things you might want to hear about making art.

No-one is doing better than you at making your art.

Because that’s, well, impossible.  People try to construct narratives in which artmaking works like a ladder, with your place on a ladder determined by how many assisting gigs you have, or how sizeable your audience is.  These things will ebb and flow throughout the course of your practice.  The job - regardless of where you’re doing it or who you’re doing it for - is always going to be writing things down, making films, playing music, directing plays, etc.  That bit doesn’t change, that’s the work that we love to do, that’s why we’ve chosen to do this.  The rest of it is between you and your own ego.

You may never own your own home.

True.  But, then again, neither does my Mum.  And she’s pretty cool & happy.  Or my brother.  And he works with computers & sends me texts that say things like: ‘oh you’re on about the new baby LULZ’. 

Some people really hate your work

Great.  People’s value judgements of contemporary work can often be about everything other than the work.  But I’m reading about Vsevlod Meyerhold at the moment.  He was murdered because the Russian authorities were suspicious of his work.  MURDERED.  Let that sink in for a second.  And he said, “If everyone praises your production, almost certainly it is rubbish.  If everyone abuses it, then perhaps there is something in it.  But if some praise and others abuse, if you can split the audience in half, then for sure it is a good production.” (quoted from Jonathan Pitches, p.1)

The way in which we make and distribute work is changing

Fortunately, though, there’s still people out there who want to read, listen, watch, be moved.  You’ll just won’t be able to fall back on received models – in the same way that we don’t fall back on received models of the work that we make.  It’s alright, your ideas are awesome, you’ll figure it out.

Fuck.  The White Lung album has finished.  This is taking longer than I thought.  Time for St. Vincent.  You should check this one out if you haven’t already.

You should take time away from your work unless you want to be dull as fuck.

One of the greatest myths about artmaking is that it has to consume each and every one of your living hours and thoughts.  If I was more intelligent, I’d argue that this is capitalism demanding more and more of our affective labour.  The time that you spend away from your laptop and out in the world is the time that makes you who you are.  It will make your work what it is.  Your own personal innovation of whatever sort will come from the shit that you do, the textures, the rhythms & the colours that you notice, that we’re not able to do.

The old model of record deals was only 50 years old.  People have been making music forever, yo.

This is an estimate, but I reckon I’m right, give or take 15 years.  See the point above about the models that we use to make & distribute work changing.

Some people will ask you to work for free.

And you’ll have to figure out if you can afford it or if you want to do it.  The power of choice is your own.  I’ve done it twice in the first 12 months I was in London: I walked 70 minutes to rehearsal every day, worked double shifts on the Saturday & Sunday, and I’m still paying monthly instalments to my then-flatmate for the rent he helped me to cover.  I’ve also turned down unpaid work at a good theatre that I really, really wanted to do, because I just couldn’t afford to do it, and my work didn’t collapse.  But, remember, your artistic practice is (most likely) not assisting or interning for someone else.  These experiences can be helpful educational opportunities in some cases, but they can also feed the ‘ladder’ image we discussed in point 1.  It can feel much better to say “I’m working on xxxxxx production that you’ve heard of”, rather than “I’m working on my show/book/album that you’ve never heard of”.  The focus should always be on your own work, your own vision, the things that you have to say. 

Don’t feel pressured into drinking/doing drugs/being someone who is not you.

I agree with the sentiment offered by the article here, although the image of artists drinking loads and doing drugs is a bit odd.  I’ve been to plenty of parties attended by people who work in theatre, and I’ve never been offered any drugs.  Maybe I’m just going to the wrong (right) parties.  ARF ARF.

People don’t want to pay for things on the Internet.

I make live performance so I don’t really know about this.  I’ve stolen art on the Internet when I’ve not had any money.  And I’ve paid for it on the Internet when I have had money.  Fuck, I don’t know, I just wanted to write something in this form and now it's biting back.

Sometimes the best audience is your mates and your Mum.

Don’t just make work and throw it out there, hoping that The Guardian and hordes of audience will magically discover your genius.  The way in which you present and distribute your work is a creative decision in and of itself.  Think about this realistically: how many people can you expect to experience the work?  Present it accordingly (i.e. size of venue, number of performances etc).  And bigger is definitely not always better: theatre, for example, would be much better in the basement of Shoreditch Town Hall than the O2 Arena.

Nepotism is everywhere.  So make some friends.

But, like, real, genuine friends and collaborators.  Don’t be cynical about this – our art society is FUCKED if all the young people are making shallow, mercenary relationships with each other.  But, you’re more likely to want to work with people that you like and can trust.  I recommend my friends for work all the time when I know it is perfect for their practice, and they do the same thing.

Your day job might not be interesting, but your own work is fucking fascinating.

This, to be fair, is the same sentiment offered by the article.  I’ve just rephrased it.

You may never be able to afford children

This seems similar to the house one above (you can tell I don’t have kids, I’m comparing a child to a house!).  But, I know some artists who are absolutely phenomenal parents.  It looks unbelievably tough, but it’s also what they want to do & it makes them so fucking happy.

You need to take responsibility for your own finances.

Again, I’ve just re-phrased the point made by the article.  When you’re ready to start thinking about it, you should consider things like a pension.  Before you’re ready to think about it, the HMRC will come calling so get on top of your tax.  Fuck, I’m boring myself.

If you’re being exploited, challenge someone about it.

I feel odd writing about this one, but it was one of the points that ate away at me.  The way this point is written makes it sound like the arts in this country are full of dodgy casting couch types.  This has never happened to me, and I’ve never thought about doing it to anyone else.  Now, I can’t speak for female or transgender artists here, but if they are being exploited in this way then we need to be talking about this & calling it out NOW.  If you feel exploited in less sinister ways (working longer than you should etc), then call people up on it. Jess Gowwrote excellently on this, in the context of stage management.  I can also think of two other people (not my stories, I’m afraid) who have debated this fiercely with their employers, and they’re doing fine.  No one person can destroy your career, no matter what some dickheads like to think, because they can’t stop you making your own work.  Most likely, if they’re exploiting you already, then you won’t ever enjoy working with these people.

Don’t think that your work is more important than your family or friends

Because, in most cases, it’s not.  The fixed date nature (i.e. opening nights / gallery openings / premieres) of art work might mean that you can’t change your calendar around like some other family members.  Make sure you make it up to them.  Remember your family members’ and your friends’ birthdays.  Don’t just pick them up when you’re ‘not busy’.  These people love you unconditionally.  They will keep on loving you even when your work doesn’t.  And, they make you who you are.  See point 1 again.

You will be rejected.  A lot.

Yeah, this one is true.  But you know what can’t reject you?  You’ve guessed it, your own work!  I know this is meagre comfort when you’ve just come 2^nd in a competition that offered you everything you thought you’ve ever wanted in your work.  Trust me, I’ve been there.  This is why it’s important to spread your happiness around a little bit: your friends, your family, see the point above.

Being able to be open, sincere, honest, friendly helps.

Fuck ‘being charming’.  Fuck ‘being confident’.  I hate all of this false shit that people tell emerging artists.  It is not the basis of a long-standing, innovative practice. If you can be open, sincere, honest and friendly – which you all can, it’s the blue sky of humanity behind the clouds – then you’ll be received as charming and confident.  And, if you do find these too difficult, then write the best fucking book in the world, make the best fucking play or film, play the best fucking music, dance the best fucking dance in the world, and then they will want to be charming and confident to you.  I don’t think that Edward Bond has ever, ever expended one iota of energy in an effort to be charming.

You can control the amount of time that you spent answering emails.

Email and mobile phone technology create this idea that we have to be always-contactable all of the time.  I try to set a limited amount of space at the beginning & end of the day to reply to emails.  Procrastination sometimes gets the better of me, but that’s all on me.  People will be happy to wait for a day, and if they’re not they should be fucking phoning you.  I have a friend who works for a major global bank, who claims that he is not allowed to turn his mobile off in case there’s a financial crisis in Australia.  I don’t know about you guys, but that’s not the life that I want to lead.  And, besides, I find it a bit creepy that someone might have answered my email whilst lying in bed next to their partner.  MATE.  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

‘The arts’ are London-centric, but there’s some amazing work being made outside of London without the same distractions.

The ever-revolving series of parties, coffee meetings and opening nights does mostly take place in London, to be sure.  But, friends, in Newcastle, in Farnham, in Folkestone, in Exeter, in Bristol, in Glasgow, in Cambridge, in Stockton, in Eastleigh, and SO MANY OTHER PLACES, there’s this amazing thing: people settling down and getting to their work.  And then they come to London and I think “Oh FUCK what have I been doing with my time?!?”

Aside from the obvious, the only difference between a ‘professional’ and an ‘amateur’ artist is how we define ourselves.  And so that’s a pile of shit.

The term ‘hobbyist’ in the article felt pretentious and patronising.  I’ve been looking after 11 youth theatre shows for the NT Connections festival this year, made by schools, youth theatres, community groups, and some of them are so much more exciting and live than a lot of ‘professional’ theatre I’ve seen this year.  ‘Professional’ artists get paid for their work, most/some of the time, sure.  But rather than fussing about this label, isn’t it more liberating to think that we can all just define ourselves as artists?  We’re not competing with them – remember, point one, no-one is better than you at being you.

We’ve always, forever, been figuring it out as we go along.

I didn’t know how long this was going to take to write (for the record: two plays of the White Lung album, and one play of the St Vincent album).  I don’t know how I’m going to produce my next show.  Nell Frizzell doesn’t know how they're going to pay their rent, in a time when writing commissions are getting fewer and fewer.  Rufus Norris doesn’t know if he’s going to be able to run the National Theatre successfully.  Eimear McBride didn’t know whether ‘A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing’ was even going to be published.  We’re all completely terrified.    

Things are changing right now, to be sure, and this is a particularly difficult and unsettling set of jobs that we’ve decided to do.  It’s scary, and we’re all fragile and vulnerable.  But the least we can do is to frame it positively and remind everybody of what we have: ourselves, our own creativity and our own practices.  Otherwise we spend all our lives waiting around to ‘make it’.  No-one can take your own practice away from you, and some people will completely love that.  The more that we propagate ideas of competition and of professionalism, the more we risk creating work that is completely sanitised, cynical, and professional in every way. 

Keep at it, dudes.
xxxx

    

   

    

Laying your cards on the table.

June 2011 note: I originally wrote this essay on the 2nd or 3rd January this year. I was at my Dad's house in the middle of nowhere, still recovering a little bit from an all-night New Year's Eve bar shift. I wrote it in a blur, barely proof-read it, and posted it. Shortly afterwards I began to question my intentions in writing and posting this - appropriately enough, I began to feel very self-conscious about it and deleted it. I think it was online for about 20 minutes. I think that the only person who read it was Oli Goldman - a young and talented film scholar who I had the pleasure to teach in his first year at university - who caught up with me on Facebook a few days later to tell me how much he had enjoyed reading it. I think I have been meaning to re-post it since then, but it came up in conversation the other day - and I have been hoping to write more - so it seems like a good time to post. So, my objectives in posting it are different to what they were in January. Nevertheless, I hope - like I did then - that they are honest.

In Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972) - which I watched on television last night, as part of a Father Ted season, introduced by Graham Linehan who didn’t seem to know much about it - Lenny (Charles Grodin) really can’t stand the fact that Lila, his wife-of-2-days (Jeannie Berlin) talks during sex. This wasn’t something that he was aware of before their marriage - the film makes a point of telling us that Lila wouldn’t sleep with him before they were wed. Furthermore, Lenny is convinced that Kelly (Cybill Shepherd), the girl he has met on his honeymoon, wouldn’t talk during sex. He has no evidence to support that theory, but he is convinced. I reckon I could get him to wager that Kelly also doesn’t put on make-up or wear haircare products either. Unlike his new wife, she is a mathematical sum that has already solved itself so that you don’t have to.

Jeannie Berlin in THE HEARTBREAK KID

Lenny is so convinced of this that he is prepared to get honest with Kelly’s father (Eddie Albert), he is - in a phrase that Kelly gleefully takes up - ready to ‘lay his cards on the table’. He is going to be honest, he is going to reveal all of his thoughts and emotions pertaining to Kelly and Lila. He does this in a highly pressurised environment: in a busy nightclub, tightly framed opposite Eddie Albert with Cybill Shepherd, in bemusement, and Audra Lindley (Kelly’s mother), with some sympathy. But it doesn’t do him any favours: the Father sees Lenny as a snivelling toad, unworthy of his daughter; and Kelly loses interest very quickly, is there any fun in someone who just keeps telling you that he has been waiting for someone like you? She would lose interest completely if Lenny didn’t rapidly become someone else: threatening boyfriends and jocks across her high school campus.

This is a preamble to other ideas that have been on my mind, ideas that feel very familiar in their formulation but actually quite rare in their expression. I suspect, and I am not proud of it, that what I really want to write about is love. The art of being in love, the rules for expressing that love (or, at the least, making that love known), and perhaps the craft of allowing people to love you (because it is a craft, it is something that you can learn how to do - to some extent, at least). Maybe it’s not love that I am writing/thinking about - it could be attraction - but I like to refer to it as love. It’s definitely on my mind at the moment, as it seems to be come every New Year (who can explain THAT), probably because it keeps coming up in things. I felt a slight unease until I did write this, an itching in the tummy, an inability to concentrate on the football game that is on the television at the moment. At this early stage of writing (because I have begun with this paragraph, although I suspect that it will not be the first paragraph) I don’t even know if I am going to publish this. I don’t know if I am even going to finish it, it could be that I just need to write this and one other paragraph. Yet here goes, a bit of scratching that itch in the tummy (which isn’t physically possible, but I like the image).

Traditionally, I have had an intuition that the key to a love affair - definitely in the first part, probably less so in the later phases although I am not interested in them here - is to not give the game away, to keep your cards close to your chest. You plan ahead to be able to give enough of yourself away as to be interesting, but not too much. You don’t, above all, reveal your attraction, your desire, your love. As a young, socially awkward but emotionally heavy, scamp, I would hold firm to this rule. I would hold so firm to this rule that I even once lied about my attraction when confronted about it - a lie that, in hindsight, clearly cost me any shot at that particular relationship. I don’t think I am alone in this thought: I could, if challenged, name a handful of other people who would rather be lonely and dissatisfied than reveal their love to its object.

But, er, why? Wouldn’t it be better to be honest, to be clear? Are not, above all else, our chances of romantic success higher if we take this course of action? If we, you know, actually tell somebody? And the answer would be: yes, of course it would be better, but experience suggests that it just doesn’t work. Experience suggests - to me, at least (I need to allow for the possibility that my personal experience of love is so idiosyncratic that it will be completely alien to everyone else, which might actually explain a lot) - that as soon as you reveal too much of yourself, again particularly your love, then everything falls apart. There is nothing left to ‘find out’, and if there’s nothing left to ‘find out’ then the game is up, you had better give up any hope of that particular good time. I have, sad to say, experienced this from both sides of the table. You can say that the change starts with your own behaviour, but truth of the matter is that as soon as you feel like your dance partner has given too much of themselves - has revealed a particular vulnerability, perhaps, or shown too much interest in you, then you just don’t want to play any more. You could consciously try to change this - to do the right thing, perhaps - but you would sure as hell be doing something that you don’t want to do.

So, you have to give away enough of yourself to keep it all interesting but not so much that it will ruin the love. I have a vague idea that the reasoning for the above is that if you give away too much, the other person feels like you will be a burden upon them, that they will somehow have to change some part of their everyday life to accommodate you in a way that they are not prepared to do. Of course, being in love - PROPER LOVE - involves this process of change, it involves harmonising your life with another in a way that is pleasant for both partners. But, at the earlier stages - the butterfly stages, the points at which you-can’t-think-about-anything-else-in-a-manner-that-is-completely-disproportionate-to-the-situation-and-which-most-often-is-not-reciprocal (we’ve all experienced it) - you want the other person to think that you will be able to create pleasure in a way that doesn’t impinge too far upon everyday life. Yet there are points at which you have to put yourself on the line, at which you have to make those bold movements - in Before Sunrise, for example, (the film which I habitually use to think through love in all of its different manifestations) Jesse (Ethan Hawke) has to ask Celine (Julie Delpy) to get off the train in Vienna rather than her intended destination. It’s an early, bold move, and he risks giving away too much of himself too early. Turns out that he doesn’t. Turns out that it was the right thing to do at that moment in time. The danger of those bold moves, though, is that you have misjudged it, that you have given too much of yourself away and fallen into that ‘nice-but-over-earnest’ trap.

It is ‘giving too much away’ that drives the first third of The Heartbreak Kid, because the film suggests that Lila gives away far too much of herself after marriage. In a matter of days (if not hours), she reveals that she sings out-of-tune constantly, she is a messy eater (particularly where egg salad is concerned) and - shock! horror! Worst of all! - She has to spend time organising her hair before entering public space. When I watched the film again last night, the phrase ‘showing your working’ came into my head - the films depicts Lila showing her working. Lenny, her newlywed husband, is no longer shown just the final product but is exposed to the mistakes, the circuitous route taken to reach the final product.

Jeannie Berlin and Charles Grodin in THE HEARTBREAK KID

The film, much like Lenny, is very unfair to Lila during these early stages (although it does make up some ground with its human sympathy for Lila after Lenny has decided to get their marriage annulled - Jeannie Berlin’s performance in the seafood restaurant scene is excellent, burying her head in Charles Grodin’s shoulder whilst letting out a high-pitched, melodramatic cry that feels entirely lifelike in the circumstances). This unfairness is further counterbalanced by the slow-burning suggestion that it is actually Lenny with the problem, it is Lenny who is unhappy with his own life, that it is Lenny, ultimately, who will not let himself get married because the depth of the commitment reminds him of the passing of time and - that old chestnut - his own mortality. (As a side note, the film is also deeply uncomfortable with the institution of marriage as well as the death-fears of its male protagonists - the ease with which the religions are switched around, the farcical formality of the ceremony seem to add up to a suggestion that marriage may be at odds with the way that human beings actually think, but less of that here).

Yet, Lila falls victim to the problem I have prescribed - she reveals too much of herself, she lays her cards onto the table, and she pays the bitter price (her marriage is ended, she is banished from the film, it tramples all over her, reduces her to a shrieking wreck in Miami seafood restaurant and then spits her out, never to be heard from again). The film counterposes this against Kelly - a character who purposely reveals herself drip-by-drip, providing a seductive and mysterious exterior for Lenny to obsess over. In fact, Kelly’s mystery causes Lenny to reveal entirely too much of himself - he becomes an overearnest wreck, encroaching into everyone’s frame, their personal space, telling her he loves her after just hours. In order to stay attractive to Kelly in Minnesota, Lenny has to invent a different exterior, pieced together from lies and bullshit that Kelly’s father sees through immediately.

These thoughts are dovetailing with thoughts inspired by Chris Goode’s latest blog post (if we are talking 2010 reflections - which we’re not, by the way - then Chris’s blog, with its rich and detailed thoughts about art, theatre and life, has been a major find for me - one which has helped my thinking about theatre, and provided hours of interest when I have been waiting for people to collect their coats at work) in which he suggests that what is needed is the space for people to be honest, to be open, to reveal themselves and be able to truthfully and fully announce ‘how they are’ and be listened and responded to. This made me think about the time - just a week at present, although another semi-regular class is imminent - I have spent learning directing with Elen Bowman. One of the things that I found most useful, most comforting, most liberating, most creative, about Elen’s classes was the feeling that you are being listened to and the space she creates to discuss thoughts, feelings and reflections on the work so far. There was space, for example, for me to discuss a theatre industry-related dream/nightmare that had arisen in the light of consciously feeling very free about my work thanks to Elen’s space and input. It made me think that I have also tried to create this space - not to the depth or, probably, to such use as Chris describes in, for example, rehearsals for The Author - in my teaching work (particularly when I was teaching a difficult literary criticism class, where it felt important to do a more casual ‘warming up’ session at the beginning) and, to an even more casual extent, when I was making Tape in 2009. I definitely agree with Chris that such a space is necessary, that its usefulness would be extraordinary, that the thought of it is rather beautiful.

But how do we square that with the idea, articulated in The Heartbreak Kid and familiar from experience, that exposing ourselves in this way may remove our mystery? It may even make us unattractive or, even worse, unlovable. This isn’t a description of how it should be, but a fear that revealing ourselves in the way that is necessary may actually be a burden on other people - or may be received as a burden on other people. We reveal ourselves at the risk of making someone else think that they will have to change their everyday existence to accommodate us. As I write this, I find myself disagreeing with it, objecting to its existence, so I should re-assert that this is an anxiety rather than a cast iron ‘this is how it is and always will be.’ To resolve this anxiety I want to separate ‘revealing ourselves’ from ‘being a burden’, I want to assure you that if you tell me how you are feeling - how you are really, honestly, properly feeling - then you are not being a burden on me. I think it also has something to do with your objective when you do reveal yourself. I am not sure if any of this possible - so perhaps my objective in writing this, in this particular act of self-revelation, is to hear from people whose experience suggests that this is untrue. People who can persuade me that it is safe to be honest and to be open, and that it is possible to do this without making someone feel like you are an unnecessary burden upon them.

And that brings me to the act of writing itself, of writing this which, now that it is winding up, will surely find its way onto the Internet. Have I revealed too much of myself here? Have I revealed myself as someone who thinks too much, someone who over-analyses, someone who is no fun? I have written some things - particularly in that previous paragraph - that feel true but undesirable (I even deleted a sentence that involved imposing conditions on revealing oneself, because I realised that it wasn’t how I thought at all). Am I making quite a political move here? Do I want somebody in particular to think of me as interesting, or as thoughtful, or as sensitive? Or maybe I want the opposite, to make someone think that I am pathetic and ridiculous? And who could that person be?

The most likely explanation is that I just had a funny itch in my stomach. A funny itch that started when I read Josie Long’s Dodgem Logic #1 comic on New Years Eve on the tube (which has a terrifying panel through the middle of the two pages, disarmed only slightly by a cartoon Josie Long apologising for interrupting her train of thought, in which she states that “…but when something is right, it is; not it should be, or is supposed to be, or will be once blah blah blah”); which intensified on New Year’s Eve itself when I reflected upon relationships past - illusory, lost, and broken - which have come to a head on that oft booze-fuelled night; which was taken even further with The Heartbreak Kid; and something which I finally connected to Chris’s blog. Over 2000 words later, that itch has subsided a little, and I feel like I can concentrate on that football game a bit better.

Let’s not forget that the itch has gone away because I have just given myself the space to think and to work out. The space to say what I am thinking about.

P.S. I am quite aware that this piece doesn’t have a conclusion, doesn’t really have a point because I am too scared to follow the logic to its end because of the inhibitions and restrictions that it contains.

Yet, about half-way through writing this I was reminded of the insight of my friend Abigail who also spent two weeks learning directing with Katie Mitchell this past January (but I’M NOT REFLECTING ON 2010, DAMMIT). We were talking climate change - as we were wont to do in that group - and we were talking about how a full appreciation of the enormity of the issue can put other things into perspective. I remember her example, “things like telling boys you fancy them…you realise they’re just not important”. So, let that be a conclusion to you: this all feels important but it’s really just the minutiae with which we concern ourselves, none of it really matters. (But that’s not true. Is it?)

On the tyranny of production values.

I used to be in a band. We were called My Friend Fred (in hindsight, I think that the name may have been inspired by an idea I had for a ska band oriented around the concept of mental illness: a concept that was [probably rightly] rejected in all but its name by the rest of the band). Again, looking back, we didn't sound all that pleasant: my thinking at the time was dominated by the concurrent thoughts of wanting to reject musical competency and wanting people to like us (a destructive combination). Yet, I'll tell you what, performing in that band was fun. A lot of fun. Performing was a shot of adrenaline (adrenaline that did little for my control and precision as a guitar player).

The arguing in the car on the way to gigs was less fun. I am sad to say that being in this band probably weakened my friendships with two individuals - both of whom, at the beginning, were very good friends but neither of whom I talk to much these days (it should be said that this is equally accountable to the fact that we all live in different cities now and, in one case, different countries - we're hardly the three people in a seaside town who all listened to Less Than Jake but couldn't figure out how to integrate horns into a punk rock band). Again, in retrospect, I can see or at least suspect that these arguments were to a significant degree sparked by my serious-ness about the whole endeavour. Particularly when it came to booking gigs - I wanted to play 'good' shows, supporting 'good' bands, and wanted to look 'good'. If we had stayed together for more than about 9 months (or was it longer? I can't remember), I would have been the one who pushed for 'getting signed' - you know, the bad guy in Wayne's World or something similar. This is in spite of the fact that one of the best gigs we ever did was in a working-men's club in Folkestone, as a joint birthday party, with just our friends (videos from this performance keep popping up on YouTube, but I'm pretty sure there's none of our performance - mostly those of my brother, in his makeshift one-night-only band, called The Dukes of Hazzard, singing Pennnywise). We probably would have had as much fun, had an-as-good-if-not-better experience, just playing shows like this. I couldn't understand that at the time: I wanted us to jump into the deep end, to be a 'proper' band, a 'professional' band.


THE DUKES (PART.2) "BRO HYMN"
Uploaded by STEADY-EDDY123. - Discover more animal videos.
(To my mind, there's never not a time to re-visit the moment when my brother was lead singer of a band for a night - the fact that he doesn't turn up in this video until 1:30 in, faffing about with a bubble gun, makes it all the more brilliant).

I have been reminded of this notion of being a 'proper' or a 'professional' band today. I was definitely taken with this idea, close-to-obsessed with taking this band in that direction. This was motivated by school yard competitiveness: there were three or four different bands of around my age, all of whom would boast of supporting this-band or that-band (regardless of whether they were or they weren't), or of touring that country or that country. When I would go to punk rock gigs, you could praise a support band by saying that "they sound like a professional band". The idea of sounding like a professional band, behaving like a professional band, working like a professional band was an extremely seductive one to teenagers interested in music. If you were being offered more gigs, with more famous bands, from more established promoters, being complimented by more established record labels, then you must be travelling in the right direction. Or, at least, that's how the logic went.

(Incidentally, one person from one of these school-yard bands was actually signed to a major record label and was pushed as a heart-throb for underage girls. Looking now, I see that his website hasn't been updated since 2008, suggesting that he has indeed been dropped by his label. His old website serves as a virtual index of the ruthless of the music industry - that thing that we all wanted, in one way or another, to buy into; that thing that I annoyed or hurt the feelings of two friends pushing for.)

Recently, I've been interested in how this idea of 'professionalism' or 'proper-ism' in art is used as a template to dictate what a 'real' band, what a 'real' filmmaker, what a 'real' theatre-maker looks like. It was an idea that appeared on my academic radar when researching and writing about the film 'Tape', and the use of digital video technology in cinema. The technology was (and is) relatively inexpensive. When these cameras first flooded onto the market, there was an explosion of rhetoric in independent film circles about how filmmaking was finally democratised. Typically, this rhetoric would observe that filmmakers were no longer constrained by the price of cameras and other equipment, and how digital technology offered them access to cheap filming and editing equipment that was of professional quality. This rhetoric found concrete examples in the work of the Dogme95 movement - particularly the success of Thomas Vinterberg's Festen at the Cannes Film Festival - and then, in American form with The Blair Witch Project. These films had cost relatively little, yet they were proper films!

And there's never not a time to think about Festen.

Yet there was no denying that the digital video image had a particular texture and quality. The compression of the light captured in front of the camera into bits and bytes gave the image a blocky quality, a sharpness that stood in stark contrast to the warm edges of film stock. No-one was mistaking digital video images for what was previously accepted as the way that films looked. For filmmaking to become truly democratised, what was needed was a re-conceptualisation of what a 'proper' or 'professional' film looked like. Otherwise, films made with digital video would continue to be seen as aberrations from the norm - they would be amateur, either by necessity or by choice. A stylistic choice that had to be resolved within the overall aesthetic of the work. We can see here the tyranny of the professional: a set of production values that a text must meet to be treated as 'proper' by audiences. And these production values are prohibitively expensive: in order to make a film, you need to have money.

Yet, if enough filmmakers chose to make films with DV technology, it is entirely possible that this shift, this re-conceptualisation of what is 'professional', could be enacted. Perhaps there was a moment when professional production values could have been re-defined to the point that filmmaking could have become truly democratised (I tended to think that this was a fallacy when I was writing my thesis, although I am now warming to the idea that it could have been possible). Instead, Hollywood moved to re-define what a digital video film looked like: it successfully shifted the digital video film from the inexpensive to the extremely expensive. That re-definition was called Cloverfield.

Cloverfield - a mega-bucks monster movie produced by J.J Abrams, the man who brought you TV's Lost - pretended to be a DV movie. It embraced the shaky-cam aesthetics that had come to be associated with the DV technology. It used timecodes - added during post-production, evident to anyone who has ever actually used a DV camera for home video purposes - to foreground its 'amateurishness'. However, within this context of DV-ness, it created a big monster. And lots of explosions. But mostly, a big fucking monster. Now, this is outside of the remit of anyone making a film on a budget low enough to necessitate the use of a DV camera. Oh, and it also used a HD camera - not the DV camera that it tried so hard to represent, the DV camera that lent an air of authenticity to the monster movie genre - so it didn't have to deal with the image texture of the true DV camera. This film created a new standard of what a DV film looked like, it re-affirmed that 'proper' production values were expensive business, and it therefore quashed the democratisation of film (something that was probably pretty much done anyway). Of course there's nothing stopping you from making a movie with a DV camera - there's a lot of budgets that necessitate it - but Cloverfield had ensured that, without a truckload of cash, you were going to fall short of the production values of what is proper and professional in cinema.

Cloverfield - mmm, low budget.

I was reminded of this part of my thesis, and my obsession with the professional in my short-lived bout of musical performances, this past weekend at Improbable's Devoted & Disgruntled 6. D&D6 (as it is known) is a open-space meeting for anyone who cares about theatre - an opportunity to raise and discuss an issue that you care about with generous like-minded folk. People often talk about the inspiring and galvanising qualities of D&D, but I found it a far bumpier ride than this would suggest. My experience fluctuated between hearing amazing ideas that spoke to questions I had had about theatre, meeting exciting people with analogous frustrations and interests to mine, and feeling like I was banging my head against a brick wall. I think that if the experience had been exclusively positive then it would have been a cause for concern: life is a series of fluctuations between, on the one hand, an excitement that is felt in your body and can only be expressed by jumping into the air and, on the other, a despair that makes you feel that you are too thick to communicate with anybody because just no-one seems to understand you. And, as facilitator Phelim McDermott pointed out, D&D is nothing but a reflection or echo of real life. The principles that are set out for the open space, he says, are just what happens in life, and it would be a sign of subjective distortion if the only thing I experienced for two-and-a-half days amongst my fellow human beings was ecstacy.

When the dust has settled, though, the experience was overwhelmingly a positive one: I didn't call a further action session on the Monday morning just because, as I articulated to new friend Julia who seemed to be experiencing the same blurriness as I that particular morn, I felt like my action had been taken in meeting the people I had met and fully intending to carry those relationships forward in future work. Any further steps to action would have been quickly and badly thought-through, I felt. So much needed time to be digested and to take something even remotely resembling actual physical form. We were, after all, dreaming nothing less than a complete upheaval of the conditions under which theatre in constructed, produced, exhibited and received.

And this begins to steer me back around to the tyranny of production values and what constitutes 'professional' theatre. In a stimulating panel on Saturday afternoon about whether 'theatre supports the systems and class structures that have failed us', there was significant agreement that theatre institutions as they stand - in their working practices, their staff entry requirements, even perhaps in the nature of the work that they produce - renew conventional, class-bound, self-destructive, unsustainable forms of society: you know, the capitalist system. This was a conclusion arrived at in at least three panels that I attended: as well as this one more generally about 'politics', it was also persuasively argued in a panel about patriarchal blocks and one about climate change. There was a lot of agreement that the ways that we produce, the ways that we perform and the ways that we watch theatre need to be re-thought to create a more inclusive, a more sustainable, and a more challenging mode of theatre. Yet, we always seemed to get stuck when imagining what this mode would look like - making it all to easy to retreat from this bold conclusion.

It was suggested that performing in living rooms could be one route forward: something that has antecedents at least in the early days of Red Ladder Theatre Company, and Wallace Shawn's monologue The Fever. This suggestion was mitigated by a young producer, who responded that yes, it sounds like a good idea, but you'd still need a lot of money for props, for costumes, for set, for lights and so forth. And this struck me as the tyranny of production values in the context of theatre: just like in cinema, you need a certain type of (expensive) camera to make a 'professional' film, we are in many cases (at least, I know that I have thought this and probably still do to some extent) of the opinion that we need these technical, expensive things to make a 'professional' piece of theatre. If we don't have a set, or costumes, or props, or lights, or composed & recorded sound, or famous actors, or comfortable seats etc, then we somehow aren't thought of, or don't think of ourselves, as making a proper piece of theatre. I think that some of the least appealing theatre that I see is work, often on the fringe, that is in thrall to these production values, that directs itself in the direction of these production values, but clearly does not have the money to meet them. It makes half-hearted attempts at meeting these standards, and falls visibly short of the mark, rather than making a virtue of the lack of money. (The work is not necessarily bad because of this characteristic, but it is often a reliable index of a set of aesthetic ambitions, work practices, etc).

But, maybe a lack of money could be a conscious choice. Given the choice between spending a lot of money on costumes, set, props, and technical gadgetry, and spending nothing at all on these things, we can choose to spend nothing at all because it could make for better work. This would be something of a re-conceptualisation of what proper theatre looks like - if enough people did it, or something similar. We would break the tyranny of production values by shifting assumptions and expectations. We cause a shift in the definition of what good work is. When I think about it, most of what is thought of as aesthetically radical, 'directors theatre' (yuck), today in this country relies heavily on a bold use of lights, sound, set etc etc etc. There is less focus upon the potentially bold use of performers, when in fact some of the most radical theatre-directors could just be directing performers in really interesting ways.

I'm sure that a lot of people have already realised this (didn't Peter Brook write a book about it? What? In 1968? Yeah. Before the Internet? Well done Tom.) but personally I have perhaps been too in thrall to the tyranny of production values, so it's worth thinking about and articulating. Perhaps some other people have found themselves in the same web. In the same way that I wanted our band to sound like a proper band, I have wanted to make theatre that looks like proper theatre. And what constitutes the notion of 'proper' or 'professional' (I have used the terms vaguely and loosely throughout - would never pass an academic board) is defined by the big institutions, those with the money who have a vested interest to keeping the production value bar high, otherwise just anyone could make theatre, couldn't they? And we can't have that. No, can't have that at all. This makes the obvious worth re-stating though: to create this inclusive and accessible circuit of theatre and performance that we are dreaming - one that asks more from its audience than just their money, one that allows its artists to survive without being defined and dominated by the capitalist system - we need to name and to subvert the tyranny of production values.

And that can only be done in our work.

On criticising, on creativity.

A friend recently told me a story about going to see a show in London - a show that he had really, really enjoyed (he might have even used the word ‘loved’). Coincidentally, two people were sitting nearby with whom he has vaguely acquainted: both of whom, like my friend, made theatre in one capacity or another. Immediately after the show, these two people accosted my friend for his opinion. They had both, in unison, hated the show, an opinion as strong as my friend’s just in the opposite direction. When my friend’s opinion turned out to be in conflict with theirs, they demanded why he had liked it, what was it about that show that he could possibly have liked.

Now, for my friend, this post-show incident marked, perhaps even tarnished, the entire experience of the show. All my friend, at that early point, could volunteer was that he had enjoyed it, it had moved him. I would venture to say that, to this pair of theatre-makers, my friend’s reluctance or inability to talk about their opinion at that early stage appeared as a sign of wrong-ness, maybe even something worse. Regardless, his failure to stand up to their ruthless line of questioning likely would have confirmed their own opinion - the opposite side being unable to answer the bell.

When I heard this anecdote, it sounded familiar to me - probably, I hate to say, from both sides of the fence. I could recount times when other people’s quickly expressed opinions have felt like an assault: I have learnt to deflect them, although this has its downsides (recently, at the Young Vic, an acquaintance asked me “So, what do you think?” in the interval, to which I responded “I think that it’s half-way through” and was aware of having been rude, when really all I wanted to do was to talk about anything but the show, aware that I was halfway from having all the evidence). I can recall having actually changed my opinion on something, or at the least being aware of the thought that my opinion was the wrong one, after watching Das Experiment as an undergraduate (a film that found a rather gripping and exciting experience, but which my peers unanimously agreed was ridiculous and farcical - I was too embarrassed to volunteer an alternative viewpoint, and kept quiet, feeling a little ashamed).

Yet, I am also sure that I have treated some works of art unfairly in a rush to form an opinion about it - sometimes a work will do something early on that will affect my entire experience of it, meaning that I will be negative about it regardless of what it will turn to do or to be. Sometimes I have felt like, on reflection, that I went into a theatre or an auditorium with a mental checklist of notes that the work has to hit or barriers that ‘good’ work cannot fall beneath (at different stages of my journey with art, this checklist may have been stylistic, political or craft-based). This feels like doing violence to the work, forcing it to accord my own rules rather than accepting and appreciating it on its own terms. Similarly, I have also felt like my experience of work has been a frantic scramble to form an opinion before the final applause or the final credits - to be able to face or, even better, preempt those conversations, those questions, those challenges from friends and peers. I suspect that this might be a common experience for many people, either under the pressure of peers or the desire to be well-equipped for a post-work discussion. I have suspected in the past that some people enjoy the discussion of the work, or perhaps - even more unfairly - the describing of their own response to a work, than the actual work itself. I don’t know whether this is true, or maybe just my insecurities projected, but it feels familiar. In the past I have said - as I said to my friend with whom we begun this journey - that if someone already has an opinion formed by the end of the show, then it is most likely not a very good opinion. It is probably not developed from reflection, or if it is then that reflection has taken the place of appreciation. (I wrote and then deleted the word ‘proper’ twice in different places in that previous sentence, which hints at an unfortunate note of dogmatism in my thinking - you SHOULD do this with art, you SHOULD do that with art - I would love to be called up on it, and be given suggestions for alternative ways of thinking).

I have been thinking about this today, because I have been reflecting on issues of appreciation and aesthetics. I detected an overwhelming, an unhealthy even, element of criticism in my thinking about making art. This is a particularly pertinent issue for me, because I recently - well, in the past 18 months, made a leap from extensive thinking and training specifically as a writer of art criticism and theory, to a PhD level, to a maker and creator of art. This wasn’t as clearcut as the previous sentence makes it look, there was a period of overlap, a period during which one made significantly more sense than the other, but it is creating a rather large obstacle at present. We all have an inner critic - that voice that says ‘ha! That sucks! You’re not working hard enough!’ - but it’s a particular struggle when the artist in you is so small and inexperienced but the critic is able to draw on theory and a lot of time spent engaging with work. The critic is able to convincingly explain why this imagined work is derivative, or why it is intrinsically inferior to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, Wes Anderson, Katie Mitchell or one of another directing role models.

The answer, I think (as with everything), is to relax into the creativity, and trust that the critical experience will inform it. I hold on for dear life to the examples of the Cahiers du Cinema critics-turned-directors: a group of critics who went on to direct some of the most important and beautiful films of film history. I think it’s important that the critical experience informs the creative experience - and, perhaps, vice versa. In fact, maybe what I want to suggest is that there needs not be a held separation between the two, that they are just two expressions of the same experience - a critical opinion can be formed from a creative appreciation and reflection, and creative expression can be informed by critical opinion, critical theory, a critical knowledge of history.

Yet if you worry too much about one or the other, force one or the other too far into self-consciousness, then it can have a distorting effect. This is, I think, perhaps what happens when we fall into ‘opinion-mode’, focused more on forming our post-work opinion rather than the work in front of us. This will probably be encouraged by our thoughts about ourself, our friends or our circumstances: the pressure of university, for example, and the self-suspicion that we may be less intelligent than our friends, can motivate us to focus on the opinion rather than the work. That opinion, by the by, will probably be wrapped in theory, in pre-suppositions, and in unclear thinking (I know, I’ve had these opinions).

By way of conclusion, I would say that there is, most likely, a distinction to be made between the terms that these conversations could take place under: if it is OK to articulate half-formed thoughts about a experience you have just had, describe things that immediately appealed to you, under the understanding that there may be contradictions in these sensations, without feeling pressurised to relate it all to Baudrillard or put it in its full historical context - under the understanding that these things may well become important or necessary later in your reflections - then the thinking would become clearer, the discussion more shared and more enlightening. Yet there is a contract here, a responsibility here, to keep the work in your thoughts, to keep reflecting, to not dismiss out of hand, to accept that things may appear to you later rather than immediately.

The second conclusion here is probably a more selfish one - the acknowledgement that this writing is mostly a working out of anxieties relating to what I hope to be a forthcoming period of creativity. I start looking into a new project this week - making a few nudges in an unexpected direction, a direction that my critic is screaming that I know nothing about and have no place within - and, like many other directors of my age and experience at the moment, am also thinking about and proposing a project for The JMK Award (an exercise that I find difficult, making huge leaps in a direction without making all the little steps necessary for foundation). It’s an exciting period - if I can only just stop worrying that I am doing it properly. The answer, like so much in life, work and love, is to relax.

BCG jabs in cinemas, or something that cinema and theatre have in common

It is Christmas Eve and I have flu. Fortunately, it is not as bad as some of the more tragic cases reported in the news but it is bloody there. My main symptoms are: constantly being the wrong temperature; coughing, sniffing and sneezing in a way that makes me insufferable; and an inability to listen to any music with distorted guitars (Sundowner it is, then). However, it also means that I am actually watching and reading the things that I brought back to my Mum's house.

Which is to say that I have read 50-odd pages of Jonathan Rosenbaum's 'Moving Places: A Life at the Movies' before 9am today. Much of it is familiar, I read a lot of it when writing my PhD (I think it was at the writing stage, rather than researching, as I came across it far too late to admit) although in that capacity you tend to, in the words of my supervisor, 'gut books' rather than properly read them. Reading Rosenbaum here is a testing pleasure: his sensibility is romantic and his experiences are fascinating, although I sometimes feel that the prose style can be a little laboured (more so, it should be added, in 1980 rather than today).

This passage struck me this morning:

Most people would say that film is undergoing a profound transformation. Maybe it is, but where do you draw the line between profound transformation and extinction? What appears to be the survival of movies, at least in this part of the world, is an illusion created by advertising, "distinguished critics" whom you can read in magazines sold in supermarkets enacting their weekly rounds of slavery, and a few lonely theatres in shopping malls that already seem haunted on the day they open - places to buy expensive buttered popcorn whose empty tublike containers rattle under the seats afterward. When the Salk polio vaccine was invented in 1953, shots were administered in children at the Princess. And when Rosenbaum Theatres was sold in 1960, one of the first steps taken by Martin Theatres - apart from raising the ticket prices (an issue on which Bo had refused to budge) and firing most of the employees (including nearly all the black cleaning ladies, who used to come in every morning) - was to remove all the pay phones from the lobbies. No wonder that the lobby at the Shoals today feels neither public nor private. (Jonathan Rosenabum, 'Moving Places', Second edition Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995 [first published 1980], p. 43).

It can be easy to forget - amongst all the DVDs, home cinema, Sky Plus, 3D TV (we went to my Aunt's house yesterday, where they have just purchased a 3D TV. I think I annoyed them by finding the idea that they may sit on the sofa wearing 3D glasses hilarious) - that cinema was the most public of arts. The cinema could screen a film around which a community would orientate itself - a common point of discussion, a shared maker of meaning. As Rosenbaum also points out above, it also fulfilled civic duties that we now perhaps see as fulfilled by a church hall (although that also seems very 1980s) or...or what? I don't know. Film doesn't seem to serve that function any more - or if it does it is for very different types of community (cue the literature about 21st century global cinephilia, Internet and film festivals etc...no time here, I'm sure that Film Studies for Free can hook you up). It is this quality of cinema that led me to write about what I did for my PhD, and to try and give it the polemical quality that I hope it did.

Luc Moullet's 'Les sieges de l'Alcazar'

(slightly irrelevant, but hilarious portrait of cinema as a shared, if exclusive, culture).

And it is a love of this property that, ultimately, is why I have found myself describing myself as a theatre artist - happily, reluctantly, and with some embarrassment at the potential reaction from 'real theatre artists'. The nature of theatre - a collection of people, an audience, sharing a collective experience - satisfies that desire for people to come together and play an active role in their community, in their society and in their world. This is why, ultimately, I don't see the leap (although it's not a leap, it's more a cautious straddle, one foot on each island hoping I don't fall in) from cinema to theatre as that great, as that radical. In casual discussion, people seem to find this move incomprehensible, as if I have just moved the knight piece in a straight line. Of course, the idea that you have your medium and that's that is outdated and nonsensical, but even so I just don't see the two art forms - cinema and theatre - as all that different. They're all about public experiences, and if cinema is currently in a place where it isn't necessarily providing that (although, it is in some circles, circles that I wish to seek out) then I am drawn to theatre (which, of course, is also in some quarters doing its best not to provide that). (And it has had the happy side effect of discovering a great interest in and admiration for actors and acting).

I fear I have taken a different route to end up in a similar, but less rich and complex, place to Chris Goode when he articulated some thoughts about running a theatre a couple of months ago. Anyway, if you didn't read it before, you really ought so treat yourself this Christmas.

As a final P.S, please go and look at my friend Michael Lightborne's Kickstarter project. It's called 'Veils'. I saw some of Michael's work earlier this year in Shoreditch and it was great. He also did some video and sound design for me - going far above and beyond what I had hoped for - when I directed Tape last year.

Dancing on the ceiling.

On Wednesday evening, I watched Eric Rohmer's 'Pauline at the Beach' (1983) in my flat. I have (very slowly) been watching all of the Comedies and Proverbs, an endeavour that was inspired by Rohmer's death earlier this year.

'Pauline' is the film that has galvanised me to finish the series. Rohmer's framing and arrangement of bodies is masterfully precise - actors will make little movements, slightly adjust their spatial relationship with other actors, in a way that helps us to understand their mental and emotional relationships with each other. He is not flashy, he is restrained in his use of camera movement and editing, so that when he slowly zooms in to close-up of Pauline here, the moment she realises that of course Henri has been lying, it is like the explosion of a firework.

This is all besides the point (as far as anything this beautiful is ever beside the point), for my purpose in writing is to share some very particular moments. There's a scene, about half-way through the film, when Pauline meets Sylvain on the beach. They have briefly conversed before, and there's an evident instant teenage crush between the two of them. Henri, the mischievous and irresponsible older boyfriend of Pauline's older cousin, approaches the two youngsters on the beach and asks them if they want to come to his beachside house to listen to a record. They do. The clip starts at 06:44

There is such depth of feeling visible in the dance. It is a codified set of actions that permits the expression of desire - something that is particularly poignant for these youngsters who are still feeling their way through such expressions.

I was also struck by the environment in which the dance takes place. Clearly, Henri is an irresponsible cad who believes firmly in immediate pleasures without thought to the consequences (and his quite hilarious exit in this scene suggests - he also thinks that everyone else would be happier if they lived their lives according to these values). Yet the domestic space he keeps is in its own way quite wonderful, people come, people go, they watch television, they eat dinner, they have sex. This dance is one action that primarily defines the space as liberated. He welcomes all - it is a space where people can (and do) get emotionally hurt but it is also a free space which potentially provides physical safety and joy. It is, after all, a space where these teenagers are allowed to explore and discover their emotions.

This led me to investigate and collect other moments of two characters slow-dancing in spaces not primarily intended for dancing. What can be expressed in the dance? How does this change the definition of the space?

Thanks to some thought, some Twitter and Facebook friends (thanks to @squeezegutalley, @beescope, @solittleofuleft, Lauren, Kayleigh and Chris), I have collected some comparable moments for you:


(Deadwood series 1, episode 12: 'Sold Under Sin' 2004, dir. Davis Guggenheim, with Brad Dourif, Geri Jewell, Ian McShane & Paula Malcomson)


[clip starts at 06:40]
(Before Sunrise, 1994, dir. Richard Linklater, with Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke)


(Beautiful Thing, 1996, dir. Hettie Macdonald, with Scott Neal and Glenn Berry)


(The Notebook, 2004, dir. Nick Cassavetes, with Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams)


(Witness, 1985, dir. Peter Weir, with Kelly McGillis and Harrison Ford)


(Edward II, 1991, dir. Derek Jarman, with Steven Waddington and Andrew Tiernan)


(It's A Wonderful Life, 1946, dir. Frank Capra with James Stewart and Donna Reed)
(They never quite dance in this one, but the structure and the ideas are similar to the others. And, hell, it's almost Christmas.)

Also suggested were: Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova in Once (which I couldn't find the clip for), Matt LeBlanc and Mike Hagerty in Friends: The One with the Ballroom Dancing.. (which I couldn't embed the clip, although typically Friends emptied the motif of emotional feeling), and Patrick Swayze and Kelly Lynch in Road House (which again I couldn't find a clip for, although Monte Pindik described it as the best dance into crazy sex scene ever).

There are two ideas that struck me when watching these clips: the dance as a last-gasp effort to hold on to something more important than circumstance (which is visible in some but not others), and the transformation of public space into private space. By dancing in these unusual spaces - dancing, as we have seen, provides a space for people to express very private and very deeply felt emotions - the dancers create a space and a moment of privacy in otherwise public spaces. Some of the clips emphasise the public watching (to illustrate the discordance between private/public) and others prefer to formally emphasise the constructed privacy of the space (in which case we need to remind ourselves of where they are). In every case, the dancing emphasise the quality of the public space - often underlined by music, which either has a diegetic source (record player, piano, harpsichord) giving a sense of magic to the space or is given by the film, again to emphasise the beauty and the privacy within this public space.

Through this little gesture, the dancers reclaim the public space for themselves and improve it for everybody. It provides a space where our emotions, thoughts and feelings towards one another can be expressed within a codified set of actions (the dance). Being a dance, requiring two people, it allows those sensations to be shared. Even if we choose not to dance, it gives us the opportunity to recognise that there are people who feel and desire like us. This sensation finds its analogue in the music, again something beautiful that improves the everyday life of everybody (and not just the dancers). It is a tiny intervention into the public realm but one that would have benefit for everybody if it just happened more often.