Thank fuck for that
I haven’t read any fiction since last summer, and then this week I read Revolutionary Road. The plan had been to get stuck into my dissertation reading on my tube journeys but AS IF there is a place for Slavoj Zizek on the northern line at 8.30am. So I picked a paperback off the shelf on Monday morning and for the past seven days I’ve been living in 1950s Connecticut.
Well, actually, no. I haven’t been living Revolutionary Road, I’ve been living in a palpable sense of relief. Seriously. THANK FUCK my life is good right now, because reading this book when you’re in a difficult place must put you on suicide watch. Richard Yates’s writing is so wonderful, his characters so completely fraught with terror about their decisions, it doesn’t really matter that the decisions they have to make are different to mine. It just matters that they’re terrifying decisions. And each one can go a million different ways.
Everything I’ve seen this week - the show that we’ve been doing at work that I’ve already seen once before, then RomCom by Glen Neath and a piece of writing by Jess Latowicki at Forest Fringe on Friday, then tonight Mies Julie at Riverside Studios - everything has been watched through a veil of Revolutionary Road Relief. I’ve been so fucking grateful that I’ve not become a freedom fighter; not become complacent in a boring, easy, comfy relationship; not been shackled with an urgent need for pretty dresses and kitchen appliances; not been tied to a hometown that offers me nothing. At Mies Julie tonight I was so fucking grateful for my own life and my own directionless decision-making that I actually started the standing ovation. I don’t think I’ve ever done that before. It was such a visceral, bleak, can’t-even-breathe performance that it was really tough. Just like reading Revolutionary Road has been this week. Like watching a slow-motion car-crash, constantly believing that there’s an opportunity to change the course of the story but then everything ultimately turning to shit anyway. I’ve been able to read Revolutionary Road in little bits, two or three chapters at a time, depending on how long I’ve had to wait for a Charing Cross train. Getting to my desk at 9.30am has felt like a welcome rest from an emotional battleground. I’ve been able to pause the car-crash to live my life, but the never has the car stopped crashing.
It’s a brilliant, exhausting, ordeal of a book. Totally recommended. Maybe wait a few days before attempting Mies Julie though. I feel like I need a whisky and a dark room.
Why Sam Halmarack is amazing and why I am a dick (unrelated)
Went to Forest Fringe last night and it was sweeeeeeet. I got to apologise to Andy for being a twat at least 3 or 4 times, and I discovered by new favourite thing in the history of everything: Sam Halmarack and the Miserablites. (I find it’s easier to remember if you call them Sam Allardyce and the Mysterons though. Just a wee tip for you there.)
After a first half of Augusto Corrieri (nice slides, nice voice, nice delivery - a thinky thing about inside and outside and space and negative space and big grand empty theatres very unlike The Gate) and Dan Canham (excellent use of masking tape and FUCKING INCREDIBLE EXORCIST FINGERS), I felt a bit chilled out and therapised and not at all like sitting through some theatre-maker’s fucking musical side-project. Darling, I grew out of gigs yahs ago.
And then, almost inevitably, it was the greatest thing ever ever ever EVER. I can’t say too much for fear of being the cock who tells you Bruce Willis is dead from the start, but Sam Allardyce and the Mysterons Halmarack and the Miserablites are easily one of the best bands I’ve seen since, oooh… even since before I stopped going to see bands. Which sounds flippant but I don’t mean it to be. His voice completely broke my heart at least twice.
When I left the pub afterwards I started thinking again about the community that Forest Fringe has helped to grow. It’s absolutely true that it exists and that artists presenting new work under their banner can be confident that they’ll see friendly faces looking back at them. Last night I was intellectually challenged by Augusto Corrieri, then absolutely in awe of Dan Canham and how his body moves in UNBELIEVABLE ways, but it wasn’t until Sam Halmarack that an audience turned into a bunch of mates. I guess it’s a form thing. In the original review/preview that Lyn Gardner wrote last week, it was her line about the traditional relationship between spectator and performer that made me wonder about inclusivity and cliqueyness and all that shit. Maybe the impression I had got of Forest Fringe as some sort of private members’ club for performers on the bread-line comes not from FF as an organisation, but simply because the nature of the work they are programming expects an audience to involve themselves. Of course people are going to get to know one another if they have a common goal, a shared task, a game to play. That’s why we played Blocky-Off on the first day I joined the Brownies. That’s why we had to do group venue research in fresher’s week three years ago. That’s why museums are good for first dates.
IT’S ALL SO OBVIOUS NOW.
PS: You should go to Sam Halmarack’s tumblr because it’s ace.
Andy Field from Forest Fringe responds
… to this post I wrote yesterday about how a close-knit artistic community could exclude new audiences.
Hi Meg,
Hope you’re well.
So first things first, you are absolutely not ‘being an arsehole’ in raising this. The question of who is seeing the work and who feels comfortable seeing the work is an absolutely vital one. It’s worth asking over and over again. At Edgelands this summer John McGrath of National Theatre Wales said something that I have been endlessly recycling ever since, which is that when we talk about audiences we should only ever be talking about those people who are actually sitting or standing or lying in a room (or any space) with us whilst something is happening. An audience is those people who are present and nothing else. Because once we start generalising when we talk about audiences we can quickly disengage with a multitude of difficult questions; questions about who the work is for, who it is reaching, what is doing with or for those people and what kind of relationship we as artists or as curators or whatever want to have with them. So yes, always as an artist or as a curator I think people could and should be asking themselves who the audience actually are.
By John’s definition of what an audience should be (those people here, doing or watching the thing that is happening now) I think you are being pretty hard on Forest Fringe and by implication myself and Debbie and the way we run it. By your own admission you’ve never been to a Forest Fringe event and so have no idea who is in that audience. Despite that you assume here in a couple of places that it is made up mainly of supportive artists and that this is somehow what we mean by providing a safe space:
When they’re not performing new work in front of a supportive audience, they can become that supportive audience.
no audience member wants to walk into a room to find themselves in the midst of a party where everyone knows everyone else except them
This is an assumption that has been made before about Forest Fringe and it is one that actually gets me quite upset. In the first instant because it is patently not true. Last year by a conservative estimate we had between 1,500 and 2,500 people attend events at Forest Fringe, from an all night Daniel Kitson storytelling marathon, to 13 ‘sold out’ (around 70 people per night) performances of Dan Canham’s 30 Cecil Street to over 200 people squeezed into an Amanda Palmer gig. Suffice to say I did not know the majority of these people, as has been the case for every year of Forest Fringe since I have been intimately involved in it. As you know, in February we went to Lisbon to run a Microfestival there and me (or indeed any of us) not already being Big In Lisbon I didn’t really know any of our audiences there either. I’ve just got home from the Gate, it was a smallish but really appreciative audience of somewhere between 30 and 40 people tonight, of which I think I knew about six or seven. I couldn’t tell you about the other artists but I would say there were a good number of people there totally unrelated to the event and those performing in it.
The second reason it gets me cross is because of the disdain with which it implies that Debbie and myself (and by extension the artists we work with) hold ‘the general public’. There is a suggestion in there somewhere that we don’t really care whether they feel like they fit in or not, because we’re basically doing it for ourselves and our friends. Actually I believe strongly that quite the opposite is the case.
As I’ve said before, if you wanted to create a safe space in which artists can show work to other artists in a spirit of uncritical supportiveness you would absolutely never go to the woundingly exhausting effort of putting on a two week long programme of work at the Edinburgh festival. You wouldn’t do your utmost to generate as much publicity for that work and that programme as possible. You wouldn’t then continue to experiment with new places (across the UK and beyond it) in which to present that work and new means by which to present it, all the while being paid virtually nothing for doing so. None of which is to disparage the often brilliant environments people do create quite intentionally in order to provide a safe space to show work to other artists (Residence in Bristol’s Tiny Ideas being one very good example), but that has absolutely never been what Forest Fringe was about.
On the contrary, we want to invite those people in who perhaps don’t think this kind of work or this way of presenting work is for them. I believe absolutely in the value and quality of what the artists I work with are doing and I will break myself nearly in two to try and get people there to see it. All people. Any people. This is one of the reasons why we so value the fact that Forest Fringe is free. Because as you will have seen from the free events at Fierce, it encourages people who wouldn’t otherwise to take a risk on something that they haven’t heard of before. And yet somehow we’re still by some people assumed to be more exclusive than a venue on the other side of the city that is charging you £20 for every single show you go to.
We couldn’t make Forest Fringe at the Gate free. On the simplest level, by the terms of our agreement with the Gate we weren’t allowed to. A box office split of nothing is not exactly a good deal for a professional theatre in the middle of an expensive part of London that is trying to pay the bills. We did however make it as cheap as possible and none of the artists or the people organising it are really being paid what their brilliant work deserves. We are doing it because it is an opportunity to try and bring new people to our work, to build an interest in what we are doing and why we are doing it. As you’ll see on Thursday, I start every night by introducing who Forest Fringe are for people who don’t know, what we do and why, before explaining how the night will work. It is similar to what we used to do at the end of each night in Edinburgh, thanking people for coming and asking them to spread the word. In both instances that introduction or that thank you is there as an invitation. A means of opening ourselves up to those people who might not be sure if they fit in. Some people may still not feel this is for them and that’s fair enough, but we’re doing all we can to make them feel welcome.
I’ve been going on for quite a bit now, so I’ll probably stop. But just to say that none of that is intended to de-legitimize the question you are asking (which is such an important one) or to deny your right to ask it. I’m actually very glad that you did because it is something that matters a lot to me and I appreciate the chance to explain a bit of all of this. And perhaps actually part of the problem is mine, or rather Forest Fringe’s – a confusion over what is meant by a ‘community of artists’. I would see the ‘community of artists’ that have gathered around Forest Fringe as being the equivalent of the staff of an organisation, not its audience. And in fact I hope that perhaps having a community of artists in place of a staff structure, and a wider community of audiences and supporters that extends beyond that, encourages there to be less of barrier between those people doing and the wider public, not more.
Finally, on the subject of the quiz. It was just a quiz. It was intended as a bit of fun, for those that wanted to. We were very explicit that no one would be missing out on anything by going and that similarly everyone was very, very welcome to stay. Plenty of festivals that I have been to have a quiz. At the last Supersonic in Birmingham my team actually won the quiz though it had frankly dick all to do with my contribution. Some people like them and some really don’t (my girlfriend for a start) but surely everyone is familiar with the format. I’m struggling to understand how that something that would make people feel more or less like they belonged in a place. I don’t assume when I walk into a pub (or a festival) and a quiz is happening that consequently everyone else in the room knows one another and I don’t automatically assume that I am not welcome. Quite the opposite sometimes. The person who won the quiz (although I will admit that this was on a technicality after the Gate’s artistic director and Mr Haydon himself got the highest points total) is not someone I have ever met before. He was pleased, and I hope he’s coming back next week.
See you on Thursday. I really hope after all of this that the audience is not entirely made up of friends of mine. That would be slightly awkward. I have a good feeling it won’t be though.
Andy
Back to me again now. I feel a bit of a dick for not doing any proper research before mouthing off yesterday, but I’m also glad that this has been talking about a bit. I’m not qualified to champion the cause of the potentially overlooked new audience member, as I don’t really feel over-looked, but I definitely think that a lack of artist/spectator divide can cause its own problems.
The dangers of a supportive community
A blog post by Andrew Haydon has been kicking around Twitter today. In reacting to Lyn Gardner’s recent review/preview/whatever of Forest Fringe’s residency at The Gate, he is covering several of the arguments in the critics vs bloggers debate. While I am making this something of a pet subject in my (nearly finished!) uni dissertation, it was something slightly different in Haydon’s post that caught my eye this time.
I quote:
“The first thing I’m interested by is the way in which Gardner configures the Gate as somewhere:
‘where, for all its many possible configurations, the relationship between audience and stage remains one of spectator and performer.’
As a basic point, I’ll take that. At least, as far as Monday night went, there was a certain authority-of-the-stage going on. That said, it’s a pity that Gardner didn’t stick around for the quiz, as she’d have seen just how flimsy that sense of “authority” can be and just how quickly a space can lose its spectator/performer dynamic.”
I’ve never been to Forest Fringe in its Edinburgh incarnation. I had a ticket for something there last year but then Alvin Sputnik came up. I remember Hannah saying that most of the shows she saw outside of the Forest were a bit disappointing, and really she should have just stayed there for her whole trip, which is high praise indeed for something that takes place in the middle of the Edinburgh Fringe. High praise just coming from my friend Hannah.
I think that the main strength of Forest Fringe is that it is a friendly and nurturing environment for creative people to try out creative things. In providing space for that, it has attracted a community of said creatives who will sing its praises. When they’re not performing new work in front of a supportive audience, they can become that supportive audience. There is no door charge, so the cash-poor artists remain in their friendly, nurturing environment while the evil profit-mongering capitalists scurry across the rest of the city LIKE PLAGUE-RIDDEN RATS. Or like student theatre groups. Whichever.
(I can feel myself waffling on a bit already. My boiler’s just been fixed and throwing off my jumpers has created more than a bit of nervous energy. Will cut to the chase.)
I am entirely the wrong person to be making this point, since a) I have never been to Forest Fringe, b) I have got to know some people who make theatre on a shoestring and c) I like them, but no audience member wants to walk into a room (be it a deconsecrated church-cum-veggie cafe, or an auditorium where “the relationship between audience and stage remains one of spectator and performer”) to find themselves in the midst of a party where everyone knows everyone else except them. Of course the benefits of being able to share works-in-progress within a wide circle of similarly-minded artists vastly outweigh the discomfort of some poor friendless bastard who just wants a quiet night with a fourth wall, but if we want to attract adventurous audiences to adventurous work, we have to be aware that not everyone understands our in-jokes. Not everyone’s confident enough to take part in a quiz with people they’ve never met before.
I’m going to Forest Fringe at The Gate next Thursday. I’d put money on me knowing 3 or 4 people there, if only through Twitter. I don’t have a problem asking checkout assistants to get semi-undressed if I see an interesting tattoo poking out of a shirt collar, so a post-show quiz sounds like a fucking brilliant idea. But I’d be interested to know how many audience members attend the residency at The Gate with no connection to the community it plays host to, and how many of those felt like they (for want of a better expression) ‘fitted in’.
UPDATE 13/04/12: Andy Field has written a brilliant response to this, and calls me out on a load of stuff I’ve misunderstood/got completely wrong. I’ve published it here.
