tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79241405988208251412023-11-15T07:50:15.277-08:00taking things too seriouslySarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15605510738225432857noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7924140598820825141.post-13278928518573200742013-04-27T07:52:00.002-07:002013-04-27T07:59:25.917-07:00Fading away.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This morning, the news that the Bank of
England is issuing a new five pound note reduced me to despair.
Unreasonable, I know. But when Churchill replaces <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Fry">Elizabeth Fry</a>, we
will be left with no woman currently honoured on a British bank note
– apart from the Queen. Who is of course a woman, not <a href="http://rense.com/general56/liz.htm">a very well-disguised twelve foot lizard</a>. But she's only
there through a freak accident of hormones and history: not on merit.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Over Easter, me and my husband were in
the North East, doing initial research for a new show, <a href="http://www.danielbye.co.uk/story-hunt.html">Story Hunt</a>.
It's a walking tour of invisible things: buildings that are no longer
there, people dead and gone, events and stories that in some cases
changed the fabric of the nation's history – but left no visible
trace. We spent several days in each of three towns, talking to
local historians, reading books in libraries, walking the streets,
and asking for memories in marketplaces. And in each place, we would
put together our initial findings, look at them, and say, 'we need
to find more women'. The stories we found first were always about men. The women we had to dig for.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I'm studying part-time for a Masters in
Early Modern History. I sat in a seminar the other day where my
fellow students bemoaned the Henry VIII phenomenon: the fact that
public knowledge of the period 1500-1800 basically boils down to
that bloke and his six wives. Personally, I don't see why historians mind so
much. Whether you think Anne Boleyn was a husband-stealing witch or an intelligent woman working to Protestantise
the nation, at least you can name her.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Name me a non-royal woman from that
period.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I always wanted to have kids. I
haven't, yet. And I'm starting to realise something that disturbs
me. Sorry if you find this distasteful, but to have kids feels like
giving in. Like failing.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
I mean, there are loads of reasons not
to have kids: finance and time and climate change and my pathetically low pain threshold and how boring
small babies are and the startling rage induced in me by lack of
sleep and the fact that my selfish genes are doing rather well via eight nephews and nieces, thanks very much. But those are the logical
reasons. The illogical one, the feeling that actually stops me, is
that <i>then I'll disappear</i>.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Because you're not strictly a woman
until you've had kids. I mean, <a href="http://www.everydaysexism.com/">you're a sexual object</a> and <a href="http://www.christianitytoday.com/women/2013/april/hey-john-piper-is-my-femininity-showing.html?visit_source=twitter&start=1">you probably shouldn't have any authority over men</a> and <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7069-gay-men-read-maps-like-women.html">you're obviously incapable of reading maps</a> – but you've not undertaken <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/02/11/reviews/010211.11starrt.html">the most important job a woman will ever do</a>, so clearly you're not quite a
woman yet.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And so, in some dark corner of my
subconscious, I'm avoiding it. Because who the fuck would want to be
a woman? What have they ever done?</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
There are one hundred and seventy-one
names on the Bank of England's <a href="http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/banknotes/Documents/about/banknote_names.pdf">list</a> of people who have been suggested
to go on our bank notes. Twenty-four of them are women: for every
one woman on the list, there are about six men. Sixteen of the
people on the list have been used on a bank note: two were women.
Statistically, it's quite possible the Bank of England just stick a
pin in this list to choose who's next. Sadly, I don't think that's what
happens. But please, could we add some more to the list, and
increase the statistical likelihood of the next tenner featuring
<a href="http://www.100greatblackbritons.com/bios/claudia_jones.html">Claudia Jones</a> or <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/garrett_anderson_elizabeth.shtml">Elizabeth Garrett Anderson</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Atkins">Anna Atkins</a> or <a href="http://www.urban75.org/london/edith-cavell-statue-london.html">Edith Cavell</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eliot">Marian Evans</a> or <a href="http://findingada.com/">Ada Lovelace</a>? Because I don't want my
nieces to grow up scared of fading away. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
The email address is <a href="mailto:enquiries@bankofengland.co.uk">enquiries@bankofengland.co.uk</a>. Thanks.<br />
<br />
(Update: the hashtag <span class="search-query">#WomenOnBankNotes has more great suggestio</span><span class="search-query">ns)</span></div>
Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15605510738225432857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7924140598820825141.post-58461932858556142192012-09-05T00:52:00.002-07:002012-09-05T00:52:45.698-07:00On failingI'm fascinated by failure. It terrifies me, and yet I can't stop thinking about it.<br />
<br />
According to therapist Rick Carson, we all have a <a href="http://www.tamingyourgremlin.com/">personal gremlin</a>, whispering dark thoughts in our ears. Mine sticks an electric cattle-prod on my spine and fires me with tension every time I make - or fear I'm about to make - any kind of error. "You are a failure", she tells me. "You don't know how to do this. They're going to FIND YOU OUT". She makes my shoulders tense, my face go slightly blank and my voice contract. I can become quite angry, and blame other people for this potential disaster (in an outwardly terribly nice, slightly passive-aggressive way). I have nightmares, stress dreams where other people discover my total lack of ability. I lie in bed knowing they're dreams but unable to wake up. I bore my husband with worries and problems blown out of all proportion.<br />
<br />
And yet I don't let my gremlin go. I hold on to her, her warm furry body next to mine, and deny her her freedom. You see, I need her. She's got me where I am today. <br />
<br />
It's quite a motivating force, an absolute terror of failure. It makes you work damn hard, for a start. And perhaps in an effort to convince myself, I have become extremely good at convincing others that I'm confident and capable.<br />
<br />
I read a brilliant book last year, called Being Wrong. Its author, Kathryn Schulz, carefully details all the ways in which being wrong is a fundamental part of the human condition - and yet in some ways a logical impossibility. We don't often say, "I am wrong". Far more usual to say, "I was wrong". (Of course, we're very happy with "<i>you</i> are wrong". It's a Yes, Minister <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation">irregular verb</a>: I am right, you are mistaken, he is a total lunatic.)<br />
<br />
Schulz's book - and her <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html">TED talk</a> - argue that the healthy thing to do is to embrace our mistakes. They're how we learn, after all, change and develop and become better at stuff. So accept that we will be wrong - in fact, be glad and celebrate. Embrace error, fawn on failure, and delight in disaster.<br />
<br />
But as Schulz herself says, easy to say, hard to do in reality. Because in the present tense, I don't think I <i>am</i> wrong. If I thought I was, I'd do something about it, right? <br />
<br />
Except, of course, I do often think I'm wrong. But it doesn't make me a healthy, happy person. It makes me feel tense and awful and terrified. And that's because <b>someone else might find out</b>.<br />
<br />
So I've been thinking that I need to find ways to let my failure out. Slip the veil and reveal some wrongness to people. In small ways, if possible, in order to not terrify anyone - including myself.<br />
<br />
So I'm doing this crazy job at the Natural History Museum, which clearly I don't know how to do, because I've made it up and it's not been done before, certainly not by me. And I've called it an experiment: which is genius, because it means that failure is OK. As Ben Goldacre <a href="http://e-patients.net/archives/2012/04/the-cancer-at-the-core-of-evidence-based-medicine-ben-goldacre-on-the-missing-data.html">says</a>, there's a moral duty to publish negative results as well as positive when running experiments. Especially when funded by public money.<br />
<br />
So yesterday I stood up in front of 30 people, including the Director of the whole museum, and told them that we'd run our first event and we'd failed to hit one of our targets. Of course, I emphasised that we'd succeeded on two of the three, and I told them why it's bloody hard to hit the first. But still. Feels like a minor triumph.<br />
<br />
I'm going to try and be publicly wrong about something else this week, too. How about you?<br />
<br />
(I think George Osborne is perhaps on a similar personal journey.)<br />
<br />
<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15605510738225432857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7924140598820825141.post-40181585638832619012012-07-07T03:53:00.002-07:002012-07-07T03:53:39.470-07:00Giving Them What They WantLast year I did the Clore Fellowship (www.cloreleadership.org), and as part of that had to write a "provocation paper" on a subject of my choosing. So I went off and interviewed 8 artistic directors and a Chair of the Board about audiences, programming and quality. These incredibly generous people gave me about an hour of their time each (there's a list of their names at the bottom).<br />
<br />
Then I tried to fit everything those interviews had got me thinking and talking about into a few thousand words. I mostly failed, and I certainly (in desperation) went for far too pat an ending. But here's the result, anyway.<br />
<br />
(please note: the brief was to provoke thought and conversation: be very interested in hearing others' thoughts...)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><b>Giving
Them What They Want”: Theatre Audiences and Artistic Leadership </b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><b> </b></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><b>There
is an artform – or possibly a craft – which is practised by a
small number of people across Britain. It is not something one can
obtain formal qualifications in; it is surprisingly little studied
academically; there are very few books or articles written on the
subject. And yet the people who do it, and the people they work with
and for, have very clear ideas on how it is, and should be, done. It
is the programming of a producing theatre: what is produced, when,
and how. </b></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">This
job is done by the artistic director, who is often also the lone or
joint chief executive of the organisation. She will take advice from
a variety of sources: she may work with a creative producer,
associates, an advisory panel, a senior management team. And her
decisions must be approved by the Board of the theatre. But in the
end, the programming of the theatre is the artistic director's task:
success or failure will be laid at her door.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote1sym" name="sdfootnote1anc"><sup>1</sup></a>
</span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Over
the last year, I've interviewed eight British artistic directors: six
of regional producing theatres, one of a London producing theatre;
and one artistic director of a non-building-based national theatre.
I also spoke to one Chair of a Board of Trustees. I've asked them
all about audiences, quality, and success.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote2sym" name="sdfootnote2anc"><sup>2</sup></a>
And with each interview I became more and more astonished at the
extraordinary balancing act they were all performing. Each seemed
perfectly able to hold competing interests and contradictory ideas in
creative tension. One or two seemed unaware of the obvious
contradictions in what they said – but most seemed aware yet
pragmatically undeterred. Like a chainsaw-juggling unicyclist
heading out on a narrow plank bridge over a bottomless chasm, if they
thought too much about the sheer ridiculousness of the task, they
might stop, I suppose... </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>Q:
How do you know what the core audience will think of what you
programme?</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>A:
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Well, you don't, do you?”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote3sym" name="sdfootnote3anc"><sup>3</sup></a></span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>Nobody
knows anything about audiences really.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">And
I've also become slightly depressed at the very little distance my
profession seems to have come in the thirty years since John McGrath
made his plea for a popular theatre in </span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">A
Good Night Out</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
</span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> The opinions of “</span><span style="color: #1d1d1d;">a
well-fed, white, </span><span style="color: #1d1d1d;">middle class, sensitive
but sophisticated literary critic” are still very widely
universalised.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote4sym" name="sdfootnote4anc"><sup>4</sup></a>
We are still making theatre for a fairly small club, and very
largely judging work by the standards of that club. And there are
very good reasons why. But I'm still dispirited. And a little
angry. </span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #1d1d1d;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">Let
me explain.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">At
the centre of the whole enterprise is the audience. Financially, a
producing theatre routinely sails close to disaster: with earned
income from box office, bar and cafe making up between 40 and 75% of
a subsidised theatre's income, a couple of shows selling much worse
than expected can be enough to make a huge dent in a theatre's
finances.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote5sym" name="sdfootnote5anc"><sup>5</sup></a>
And more than a couple may bring a theatre to bankruptcy.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote6sym" name="sdfootnote6anc"><sup>6</sup></a>
</span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">And
it's more than that. An almost-empty art gallery, museum or library
may not be great for the leadership of that organisation – it
certainly doesn't help them make a case for public funding – but it
is often a rather pleasant place for the visitor: a chance to enjoy
the collections or the books in peace. An almost-empty theatre, on
the other hand, is not only a PR and financial disaster. It's a
horrible experience for everyone involved – audience, performers
and staff. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">So
we need them. Desperately. But we also – often – don't trust
them. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>who
are the best guardians of what success looks like? I think it’s
the public... how many people want to come.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>A
full theatre makes everybody happy.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>obviously
one indicator of success is that people want to come and see the show
– so sold-out houses are an indicator of success, of excitement
about the piece of work”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>I've
sat in full audiences where audiences have been enjoying it, and it's
been shit. And I've done that often. I've done it more often than
sat in full audiences where it's actually been any good.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">All the artistic directors I spoke to
flipped back and forth between apparently trusting an audience, and
their sense of what was good (<i>“Everybody knows when something's
working or not”</i>) and the acknowledgement that the reasons an
audience attends and enjoys themselves are complex – and that
artists may disagree with an audience's judgement. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>Say
I buy a ticket to something that I think you will like. We want to
have a good time. We've paid twenty quid, there's a bus or a taxi, a
round of drinks – so we've got a lot of investment in it being
good. And you go there and most things are theoretically
serviceable... People like a good story. And they laugh at the
jokes that aren't funny because they're asked to. People are very
polite. And partly that persuades them that they're having a good
time. And they don't want to be persuaded that they're <b>not</b>
having a good time.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>Sometimes
I was sitting there thinking 'oh my God why is everyone clapping,
this could be so much better'... that is where professional judgement
does come in”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I
do this too. I want to believe that the audience is right: that I
can sit in an audience and tell whether they're enjoying themselves,
and that that is the most honest and </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">morally
right </span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">assessment
of the success of a show. After all, “theatre is always made as a
conversation with the audience. The audience is half of the work”.
If you didn't care about a live audience, you'd be making short
films or writing novels. And it's very pleasant to believe that the
audience are the best arbiters when you're sitting in an auditorium
that's fairly full of people who appear to be enjoying your show.
But then, I too have sat in theatres where a large audience was
apparently having a great time – and thought the show was lazy,
misguided, or simply terrible. So what then? Are they simply wrong?
And if an audience can be wrong about this, was that other audience
wrong about </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">my</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
show? Or is it all just a matter of taste?</span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>Obviously
it's going to be a matter of taste. It's got to be taste, hasn't
it?<span style="font-weight: normal;">” </span></i></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">So whose taste should we pay attention
to?</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>We're
certainly not programming for critics.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>Of
course the critics are in your head when you programme. I think
anyone's lying who says they're not”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Theatre
faces ever-increasing competition for audiences: what with cinema,
multiple TV channels, and hours spent online, it's amazing anyone has
time to go to the theatre at all. And in the competition for
audiences, and with the almost total loss of the old model of
season-ticket holders, national press attention is extremely
important. As one AD told me, “w</span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">e
had to get a national reputation before I could get a local
reputation. I had to interest the industry before I could interest
the local audience.” Every artistic director I spoke to – every
freelance director I know – has a detailed understanding of the
output and taste of each individual critic at each of the major
national papers.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote7sym" name="sdfootnote7anc"><sup>7</sup></a></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-weight: normal;">But
those dozen or so people aren't the whole audience. The artistic
director of an Arts Council- (and usually local council-) subsidised
producing theatre is using public money to make their work. And all
of those I spoke to were very aware of that fact.</span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
Allegedly, it used to be a rather frequent occurrence that an
artistic director would “take over a theatre and run it into the
ground by doing a Moliere season or whatever: 'I'm an artist, I need
to create great art'”. I don't know whether this was ever a common
attitude, but certainly none of the artistic directors I spoke to had
it. Most of the people I spoke to were extremely conscious of a duty
to “other people's money” and to the theatre that will “be –
hopefully – here long after I’m gone.”</span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>It
may sound simplistic, but everyone pays for us, so everyone has an
equal right to experience us and be enriched by us... The ambitious
aim is to somehow at some point reach everyone.... It's clearly
impossible.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">The 'everyone' here is probably limited
to those living within a reasonable distance of the theatre building
– or more simply, everyone who lives within the council boundaries.
But even this is more of an aspiration than a reality. Even a
large, successful regional theatre like the Sheffield Crucible will
be visited by only a proportion of the population of Sheffield.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote8sym" name="sdfootnote8anc"><sup>8</sup></a>
So who will come? Who is the theatre actually serving?</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">The obvious answer is those who are
interested in going to a theatre at all (and that already excludes a
great swathe of the population who just don't think of it as for
them<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote9sym" name="sdfootnote9anc" style="font-weight: normal;"><sup>9</sup></a>)
– and, more specifically, those whose taste matches the
programmer's taste. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>You
can only programme work that you want to see... Because you totally
have to believe in what you are doing. And if you don't, if you
programme something for the sake of putting it on, because you think
it will be popular, or you're trying to reach all of the people some
of the time, the audience are going to smell that. They can sniff
that out, no question.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">This belief that the audience will <b>know</b>
if you make work cynically was almost an article of faith amongst the
artistic directors I met. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>the
key thing is not to programme anything which you think “oh that’s
the banker”... Because if I don’t believe that thing can be
brilliant, then that’s going to wash down like a hideous tide of
horribleness.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>I've
always done the plays I've wanted to do, that I'm interested in
putting on. That has to be the bottom line, I think...”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>I
have a duty to put on plays I want to see.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">And yet. How is it possible to marry
this need for the individual artist's investment and belief in every
single show with the desire to serve “everyone”? In London, the
circle is more easily squared: there are plenty of other theatres
down the road, so if a local council tax payer isn't getting the work
they want at your theatre, they can easily go off somewhere else and
find it. But almost all the regional artistic directors I spoke to
provide a city with the only subsidised theatre for quite some
distance. So they feel “a duty” to provide “something for
everyone”. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">And it's not only a moral duty – there
are financial imperatives:</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>I
hope even if I don't like it, I hope it's not something I would be
ashamed to have on. But you know, hand on heart, I couldn't really
say – [</i><span style="font-style: normal;">touring theatre
company</span><i>], for example, that's not really my thing. But
there's definitely an audience for it. And they come in and have a
perfectly lovely time, and it's a different audience, and it means we
can programme other things either side of that... because we're not
going to have [the same] people coming every week, so if you think
about all the performances we have on all year, we must have lots of
different groups of people coming, who self-select what they want to
see out of the programme.” </i></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">It sounds a little like providing a
selection box. Of course, it's not for everyone – as previously
discussed, it's a narrow band of society that will be reading that
season brochure and picking and choosing the shows they'll turn up
to. But the problem is, even that limited segment of society that
reads your season brochure or sees your posters will have varied
tastes. And how do you know what they want – what range of
flavours to put in their selection box? Even if you were prepared to
just give them what they want, how can you if you don't know what
that is? </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">This is the conundrum commercial theatre
tries to solve by only ever putting on work with plenty of
familiarity factors: a title, a star, a writer (preferably all three)
that we already know the public like. Regional reps in Leeds,
Bolton, Oldham or Plymouth find it rather harder to attract
well-known stars, but they certainly try – and a well-known TV
actor in the right part makes a massive difference to box office. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>'Who's in it?' That's always the
first question.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Failing a TV star you can still go for a
well-known playwright or classic well-loved play (preferably on the
syllabus to get lots of schools in). But repeating the same safe
list of titles won't get you national press attention and plaudits.
There's “a danger of becoming the theatrical equivalent of UK
Gold”. And nobody bothers to review UK Gold – or provide public
subsidy for it.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Of course, you can always ask the public
what they want to see. But that may not be particularly useful. One
artistic director I spoke to had a Jacobean tragedy currently selling
badly in his main house – despite the feedback he'd received from
focus groups which had indicated that audiences wanted to see more
Jacobean drama. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>I
don't really take very much notice [</i><span style="font-style: normal;">of
focus groups</span><i>]. Because I don't really believe in it.
Because people will say what you want them to say... Sometimes they
say, “we'd like to see more unusual plays”, and then we do
something more unusual and they don't come!”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">And in any case, “people actually
don't want what they want” - or perhaps more precisely, people
don't know what they want. Because they haven't read every play that
exists, they haven't met every interesting artist out there, they
don't know all the options. They've got jobs and families and other
things to do with their time, so they've delegated that judgement to
their subsidised expert. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>We
are selling our judgement. You've got nothing else to sell.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>People
want you to surprise them... to be surprised and delighted”.</i></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Which
is why unexpected hits and failures happen. Why there's no formula.
Why Bill Kenwright still makes losses on things now and then despite
years of expertise, and why </span></span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Les
Mis</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
has unexpectedly been running for 25 years in the West End. As Sam
West said recently in a speech to the House of Commons, “</span></span><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-size: small;">If
in trying to drum up support for </span></span><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Les
Miserables</i></span></span><span style="color: #262626;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I'd
called a hedge fund to say "how'd you like to back a musical
adaptation of a 900-page Socialist novel by two unknown French
guys?", I don't think they'd have called me back.”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote10sym" name="sdfootnote10anc"><sup>10</sup></a>
</span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">So where does this leave the beleagured
artistic director? Needing to provide enough familiarity to get
people in through the door, yet needing to surprise and delight them
enough that they go home and tell their friends they must see it too.
Needing to personally love every play she programmes, yet with a
duty to provide something for everyone. Needing to sell enough seats
to keep the theatre financially viable, but not “sell out” or
“pander” so far that the national critics or the Arts Council
decide the work's not of high enough quality. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Oh – and no-one can actually tell you
what they mean by 'quality', either. But the audience certainly
aren't the people who decide. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">The Arts Council of England
and Wales, under pressure to include some element of peer review in
their assessment processes, recently (2010) set up a system whereby
all ACE-funded work is now seen by an artistic assessor, who writes a
report on the quality of the work. Informal peer review, of course,
has always happened, as has assessing critical response. The
Australian Council for the Arts has gone even further, and is
currently advocating an extremely thorough research-based method for
assessing “artistic vibrancy”. There are, apparently, five
elements: </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"> Quality & Excellence
of Craft; </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"> Audience Engagement &
Stimulation; </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"> Development of Artists; </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"> Curation & Development
of Art-Form; </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"> Relevance to the
Community. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: small;">Each
can be assessed using a combination of surveys, focus groups,
internal discussion and interviews. The audience will be asked about
whether they were emotionally engaged and intellectually stimulated;
the local community will be asked about relevance. But the quality
and excellence of the craft demonstrated – “the demonstrated
skill of the actors, directors, set designers and other crew members”
- is to be assessed only via interviews and surveys of artists,
staff, peers and guest artists. Not any ordinary audience members.<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote11sym" name="sdfootnote11anc"><sup>11</sup></a>
</span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">These are the ways we judge
quality. Industry peers, expert witnesses. Not by asking a bunch of
amateurs. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">They may need to be taught
to recognise it, though.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>the
reality is that when you sit in a theatre, you recognise quality.
Now I've trained them, they won't take less than that quality.”</i></span></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">Few were as blunt as this,
but several of my interviewees talked about developing their
audience's tastes. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>some
of the things I did were to catch the audience up with some of the
things that had happened in theatre in the last 20 years” </i></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>it
is really important that you do want to take them by the hand and
lead them somewhere – you cannot pander – I mean otherwise we'd
have a staple diet of Ayckbourn”</i></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">It sounds rather
patronising put like that – and there are those who think this
attitude is old-fashioned:</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>That
used to be a very common way of describing things, didn't it - “I
want to take the audience on a journey” - that there's a direction
you knew you should be taking the audience in – and it was a
direction towards Howard Barker or the late Jacobeans or whatever it
was.”</i></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">There is certainly a whiff
of superiority here I'm uncomfortable with. The experts who know
what is good for the audience better than they do can all too easily
get very sniffy about </span><span style="font-size: small;"><i>all</i></span><span style="font-size: small;">
popular theatre. But there are truths I recognise buried</span>
here. Expert knowledge <i>is </i>different to amateur appreciation –
there is a difference in the judgements Anthony Blunt and I would
offer in an art gallery. And left to programme a theatre themselves,
the audience would only ask for, and get, what they already know
about – how can they do otherwise? </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">But they don't <i>want </i>that,
necessarily. They want to be surprised and delighted. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">And there is another side to this: a
side which came up rather less often in my interviews. <b>It works
both ways.</b> The artist needs to be surprised and delighted by the
audience, too. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>theatre
is a conversation with an audience... a theatremaker should always be
thinking about the audience, and if they think about an audience that
is essentially themselves replicated then it may not be the most
interesting conversation that you could have.”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">The best theatre is made when the
artists involved are fascinated by their audience. Not assuming they
know how they will react, not pandering to their perceived whims, but
entering into a dialogue in which the end result isn't already
decided. Where the audience are genuinely part of the show – where
the show would be different if a different group of people had turned
up.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">For a live art form, it's depressing how
rarely that happens.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">In my experience, it happens most often
in work for children, and in work made for non-traditional theatre
spaces. My theory now is that this is because making that work
requires theatre artists to come to their audience afresh: they can't
assume they know how they'll behave or react, because the usual rules
won't apply.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">To take one example, the National
Theatre of Wales spent its first year making “located” pieces of
theatre: work which was developed in a spirit of research and
enquiry, in a specific Welsh location – sometimes including
non-professional performers from that location. I saw two of those
first twelve pieces. They were both disjointed, flawed, highly
variable in quality and tone. One of them, frankly, bored me. But
they both contained fresh and joyful moments, and one (<i>The Passion
</i>in Port Talbot) was the most exciting piece of theatre I've seen
in years. Was that because of the way the work was created: in
partnership with a whole town? </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">NTW's first show, <i>A Good Night Out In
The Valleys</i> was the result of a series of workshops with people
in the South Wales Valleys: “asking them what they thought a show
about the valleys should be like, asking them what they thought the
valleys story was, asking them what a good night out would be.”
The company set themselves the challenge of making a piece of work
which responded to whatever they discovered – even when it didn't
quite suit their expectations. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>we'd
expected to do a piece with six characters in it and we had six
actors, and one of the things we got as feedback was that they really
liked character changes, so we ended up making this piece with about
30 characters...”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">The messy, multi-strand, anarchic piece
they created sold out at every venue they played at. People loved
it. However, I've also heard it described as “playing to the
lowest common denominator... it was crass”<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote12sym" name="sdfootnote12anc"><sup>12</sup></a>.
And John E McGrath, NTW Artistic Director<a class="sdfootnoteanc" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=7924140598820825141#sdfootnote13sym" name="sdfootnote13anc"><sup>13</sup></a>,
said it was a piece that “amongst some of the great and the good in
Wales was not considered necessarily an appropriate piece to start a
national theatre with.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Some people just don't like funny plays,
of course. They feel that somehow the thing isn't valuable or worthy
if it's making them laugh. The same woman who told me <i>A Good
Night Out in the Valleys</i> was crass, also told me she thoroughly
enjoyed it. I felt rather sorry for her.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">And also rather depressed. Because this
is where we've got to. Thirty years on from John McGrath's call to
arms for a populist theatre which doesn't universalise the
middle-class literary critic's opinion, subsidised theatre is still
essentially a middle-class entertainment, judged by the standards of
a small group of white, middle-class, university-educated people. </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">And that's not an insult, despite what
it may sound like. Extremely talented theatre-makers are making and
programming work they love and believe in, in theatres across the
country. And audiences are enjoying it – including me. But we're
still deceiving ourselves if we claim that we're making “something
for everyone”. And we're all too often not making work out of a
genuine spirit of enquiry. We still talk about taking an audience on
a journey towards something we think they'll like, rather than
inviting them to join us in a journey towards an unknown destination
– a journey on which we both might discover something surprising
and delightful.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i><b>Addendum,
Spring 2012</b></i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">I sent this paper to my interviewees to
check I hadn't insulted or misrepresented them, and they kindly
agreed to let me go ahead.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">John E McGrath replied with a point
which feels important to add. He questioned why I'd been depressed
by some of the attitudes to programming and to popular theatre I'd
come across:</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"> “I</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: small;">f
your paper is asking what role the audience should have in
programming, then what the NTW first year suggests is that it's not simply a
question of choice, but of engagement, in a variety of ways, in
creation of work. That seems an exciting rather than a depressing
thought!”</span></span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">
</span></span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">John, I salute you. And I look forward
to seeing and hopefully making more work which genuinely engages with
audiences in its creation. There are some brilliant people out there exploring what that means. Exciting times.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; page-break-before: always;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>With enormous thanks for the time,
thoughtfulness and patience of my interviewees:</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Helen Birchenough, ex Chair of the
Board, Salisbury Playhouse</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Ian Brown, ex Artistic Director & Chief
Executive, West Yorkshire Playhouse</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Daniel Evans, Artistic Director,
Sheffield Crucible</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Sean Holmes, Artistic Director, Lyric
Hammersmith</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Gwenda Hughes, ex Artistic Director of
the New Vic Theatre, Stoke </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">John E McGrath, Artistic Director,
National Theatre of Wales</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Andrew Smaje, Chief Executive, Hull
Truck Theatre</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Simon Stokes, Artistic Director, Theatre
Royal Plymouth</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';">Joe Sumsion, Artistic Director, Dukes
Theatre, Lancaster</span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i>And
a moment's regret for all the other amazing artistic directors and
programmers I didn't get to speak to – but then this paper would
have been even longer and further past its deadline than it is
already.</i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div style="font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div id="sdfootnote1">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN'; font-size: xx-small;">
<ol>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">To
avoid “he or she” awkwardness, I'm sticking with the feminine.
It's my provocation paper. I'm allowed.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">Depending
on how you define a regional producing theatre, there are between 35
and 45 of them in England & Wales. Include all the London NPO
producing theatres and you get beyond 50, but not much. So my sample
is small, but not completely insignificant.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">All
quotes, unless stated otherwise, are from interviews conducted in
person during 2011.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0.04cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">McGrath,
John. 1981. A Good Night Out: Popular Theatre: Audience, Class and
Form. London: Nick Hern Books</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0.04cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">The
Lyric Hammersmith, a London producing theatre with a good
fundraising profile: 44% income from box office & trading (bar,
programmes, etc) in 2009/10. West Yorkshire Playhouse, a large
regional producing house with high levels of Arts Council &
other grants: 54% income from box office & trading in 2009/10.
Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, a producing theatre with a much
smaller level of grant funding: 73% from box office & trading in
2010/11.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Admittedly
when a theatre goes into administration, the reasons why are usually
very complicated (and often disputed). However, poor return on the
box office is usually involved:
<a href="http://www.bectu.org.uk/2007/12/14/derby-playhouse-appeals-for-help/">http://www.bectu.org.uk/2007/12/14/derby-playhouse-appeals-for-help/ </a> and
http://www.thestage.co.uk/news/newsstory.php/27357/exeter-northcott-goes-into-administration</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Although
our obsession with national press critics may soon seem quaint: see
http://blogs.thestage.co.uk/shenton/2011/11/whats-the-future-of-critics/index.html
for one summary of the state of theatre criticism. This argument is
too involved to have here, however.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">A
musical at the Crucible averages 28,000 attendees; a new play might
only reach 2,000. The estimated population of Sheffield City is
555,500.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">Masses
has been written about who doesn't attend theatres and why. If
you're interested in this stuff, this might be a good place to start
digging deeper: <a href="http://www.participationandengagement-arts.co.uk/">http://www.participationandengagement-arts.co.uk/
</a>According to my interviewees, these excluded segments are from
both ends of the social spectrum. An artistic director (not of the
Sheffield Crucible) told me “We don't really get posh people
here... Not like the National.. They're all watching opera”</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">http://artsfunding.ning.com/profiles/blogs/launch-of-the-arts-index-house-of-commons-5th-december-2011</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;">http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/artisticreflectionkit/elements/artistic_quality_and_excellence_of_craft</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">A
conversation in a pub with a London theatre-maker who shall remain
nameless.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div>
</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-decoration: none;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Oriya Sangam MN';"><span style="font-size: small;">No,
not the same John McGrath as the one who wrote <i>A Good Night Out</i>. I
know. It's confusing. Sorry. Incidentally, it's no accident that
John E McGrath's <i>A Good Night Out In the Valleys</i> references John
McGrath's classic book. “It launched our year as a conscious way
to explore the questions about programme and audience that he asks”. </span></span></span>
</div>
</li>
</ol>
</span></div>
<div id="sdfootnote13">
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15605510738225432857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7924140598820825141.post-72848802799437086462012-07-05T01:18:00.000-07:002012-07-05T01:31:00.711-07:00Negative emotions, Cancer, Death: a cheery post<br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">A couple of months ago I contacted Cruse Bereavement Care and asked for help - my Mum died of cancer last August and I am finding things very hard. After some waiting, I had my first appointment with a counsellor on Monday of this week.</span></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">
<div style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">About two thirds of the way through our hour she started<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"> saying something about cancer starting in the etheric plane with negative emotions. I was extremely angry and told her so in no uncertain terms. She stuttered a little and changed the subject. </span></span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">I've just looked up what she was going on about, and it's this: </span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">"Many disease conditions begin on the etheric plane and work their way down to the lower frequency of the physical plane and eventually show up in the body. By the way, most chronic disease conditions begin as stress producing thoughts, specifically negative emotions (resentment, anger, hatred, fear, jealousy, envy, etc.), which adversely affect your aura over time."</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Ironically, found on a website called <a href="http://educate-yourself.org/newsletter/newsletter5.shtml">Educate Yourself</a>.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; font-size: small; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">She is not the first person to say something along these lines to me. Usually with fewer daft pseudo-technical words, but I am terrified by the number of people who think that cancer comes from having negative emotions. My Mum, I think, believed it. I think that's why she refused to admit she was dying until a couple of weeks beforehand. She thought you died if you "gave up" and stopped "fighting", that the will had ultimate control over the body.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It's kind of admirable, in a crazy way. This human determination to make meaning where really there is none. Magical thinking from scared people, trying desperately to make narrative sense of soullessly irrational random horror.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Because usually, cancer doesn't make good stories. There isn't a nice narrative arc. It wouldn't make satisfying theatre. If you dramaturged death, you'd change a hell of a lot. </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I got very angry recently at a scratch of a young company's new work, when we were all made to imagine and write down the details of our own deaths: the date, where we'd be, who would be with us, what our last thought would be. I tried inarticulately to express my anger in the post-scratch discussion, and didn't succeed. I realised later that what enraged me so much was these 23 and 24 year olds innocently blundering into an area they seemed to know nothing about. I felt like standing up and shouting, "The premise of your questions is ridiculous! The last thought through my head before I die - before most of us die - will probably be incoherent drug-fuelled nonsense. We'll probably be morphined-up to the eyeballs, struggling through clouds of pain and inadequate anaesthesia to think anything at all. And by the way, why the fuck would I *want* to imagine in detail the moment of death? I'm spending most of my time trying really hard not to fixate on that, thanks very much. What happened to cheery plays with happy endings?". </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And then Dan pointed out that most people haven't seen death happen. And that perhaps my experience is rather unusual anyway. And that perhaps I should be less harsh.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">I make stories, I understand the power. We're meaning-making animals, that's what we do. But there is no meaning or rationality to cancer. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/oct/23/dinosaurs.science">Dinosaurs died of it</a> - I doubt they had problems with their auras. And although I stand in absolute awe of my mother's will-power and spirit, I think in the end her body won. Or rather the cancer won over her body. And once your body's defeated, that's game-over, folks. </span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 17px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333;">Everybody dies. </span> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 23px;"><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/nora-ephron-death-quotes-342509">"Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God."</a> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #454545; font-size: 14px; line-height: 23px;"> It's impossible to believe until you see it. But it's true.</span></span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #454545; font-size: 14px; line-height: 23px;">Happy Thursday everyone.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black; line-height: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 17px;"><br /></span></span></div>Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15605510738225432857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7924140598820825141.post-90105386996804713462012-05-17T01:01:00.002-07:002012-05-17T01:01:36.938-07:00on walking out of Three Kingdoms<br />
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So. A Russian prostitute has been
murdered in a spectacularly brutal way for attempting to inform on
her “owner”. The British police track down the killer in Germany
because his sperm was in her hair: he'd wanked on her head whilst it
was held in a vice, then sawed her head off with a blunt hacksaw.
Whilst she was alive. But he isn't the big baddie. No, that's his
Estonian boss, who made him do it.
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Now we meet the boss, and his gang of
sex-traffickers. They discuss the realities of market capitalism:
the fact that very soon the traffic will be going in the opposite
direction. They'll be getting girls from Amsterdam, Berlin and
London, and selling them to Beijing, Moscow and Rio de Janiero. In
between, they mock the silent prostitute who sits in the room with
them: calling her stupid, giving her a name like a dog, discussing
the smell of her. Then they're violent towards her.</div>
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Does this sound like fun entertainment
yet?</div>
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I mean, we've seen something a bit like
this before, right? We've had ordinary, sordid, naturalistic
versions of this story before. On stage. On TV. I myself got into
a terrible state by stupidly watching the whole of Abi Morgan's <a href="http://www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/1277745/index.html">Sex Traffic </a>in one go whilst on my own, with no-one to reassure me that
no, all men do not despise all women. All women are not helpless,
silent, at the mercy of whoever's the strongest and most violent.</div>
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<br />
</div>
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Ah, but this is different. This is a
<a href="http://www.danrebellato.co.uk/Site/Spilled_Ink/Entries/2012/5/12_Three_Kingdoms.html">brilliant</a>, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2012/may/16/three-kingdoms-shape-british-theatre-or-flop">genre-changing</a>, <a href="http://postcardsgods.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/three-kingdoms-lyric-hammersmith.html">horribly funny</a>, <a href="http://sketchesontheatre.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/three-kingdoms-review-or-lost-and-found.html">nightmarish</a> version of the
story. It's been made as an <a href="http://www.lyric.co.uk/whats-on/production/three-kingdoms/">international collaboration between three amazing companies</a>.
</div>
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So the predatory men sometimes wear
wolf masks. The mostly silent women sometimes wear deer
head-dresses. People sing, and dance. The blonde, musclar Estonian
gang come on like some kind of Aryan fantasy in white vests and
boxing gloves, and beat hell out of the set whilst having their chat
about market capitalism. The silent prostitute in the corner is
wearing a very expensive and restrained green silk dress and carrying
a silver platter. When the men talk about getting girls from London,
they clock the audience, checking out some of the women and smirking
at us. A chunk of the audience giggles at their theatrical
naughtiness.
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Or perhaps at the idea of being
trafficked by these men. Because that would be great fun, hey? When
they're violent towards you, they just spit cucumber at you, or stamp
on it in a theatrical demonstration of violence. It's not actual
violence. No women were harmed in the making of this play. It's all
just a play, Sarah. Stop taking it so fucking seriously.
</div>
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<br />
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So I left. I walked out from the front
row and went home. And I wish I'd gone earlier, because then I would
have fewer of these images in my mind. And I would feel less disturbed about what all those middle-aged middle-class white men who made that
piece of work really feel about women. When they put eleven strong
male actors on stage, of all ages, shapes and sizes, and only two young, slim, beautiful and mostly silent women. When they let the men on
stage look at me the way the scary men on street corners in Brixton
sometimes look at me when I walk home late at night. When they fill
my head with horror. And give me no hope.</div>
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</div>Sarahhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15605510738225432857noreply@blogger.com0