Protesting the Proms: Israel's Philharmonic Orchestra and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign

London's Royal Albert Hall, home of the BBC Proms, scene of the protest

Last night, for the first time in its 117-year history, BBC Radio 3 stopped its Royal Albert Hall broadcast of a Proms concert because of a politically-motivated protest. Just like that. Mid-performance (Bruch's Violin Concerto, since you ask), taken off the air.

The broadcast started at 7:30pm, which is nothing unusual. Outside the Royal Albert Hall, pro-Palestinian protesters had been vying with pro-Israeli protesters in a shouting match for some hours. Meanwhile, inside, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Zubin Mehta, was about to begin their performance. But every time their Indian-born conductor stood ready for a new movement of Bruch's work, the IPO found they couldn't start – protesters inside the hall were making too much noise. The BBC broadcast was taken off-air twice, and radio listeners didn't get to the end of the concert.

The BBC Proms are hardly the place you'd expect to get heckling and disruption so serious it causes an early end to radio broadcasting. This is supposed to be a civilised event, attended by civilised, cultured people. That makes the reasons behind this protest all the more worthy of examination.

A few years ago I was in Birmingham when the REP Theatre staged Behzti (Dishonour), a play featuring rape in a Sikh temple. Local Sikhs found this distressing, understandably, and a couple of hundred of them protested outside the theatre, eventually resulting in the play's run being cut short. But that – and several other disrupted performances that come to mind – had some pretty controversial subject matter, which is what protesters were complaining about. Bruch's Violin Concerto contains nothing especially objectionable; the issue this time was the orchestra itself.

The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra is proud of its status as one of the leading cultural ambassadors of the state of Israel, as well as happily recruiting non-Jews to its ranks. Before the 1967 Six-Day War (the one where Israel grabbed a whole load of land while fighting a range of Arab nations), that was fine; Israel was the under-dog surrounded by powerful adversaries, still a young nation defending its right to existence.

But since 1967 and the increasing Israeli expansion into its newly-occupied territories (the West Bank, Gaza), with Israel's reluctance to give up control of the contested Golan Heights, it's rather harder to sympathise with Israel. These days, they're the ones risking international condemnation through their treatment of different ethnic groups, as Palestinian Arabs did in the decades before Israel's declaration of independence in 1948. Since occupying regions such as the West Bank, Israel has been expanding its settlements (of, at best, dubious legal standing) and getting involved in conflicts that do nothing for stability in a troubled region (conflicts that aren't really about Israeli self-defence any more).

In a statement on their website, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign – responsible for the protests outside last night's Proms – argue that the IPO has 'lent itself to the official Israeli propaganda campaign titled Brand Israel, which aims to divert attention from Israel's violations of international law and Palestinian rights to its artistic and scientific achievements'. I'm all for promoting the scientific and artistic achievements of Israel (or any other group of people, for that matter), but the IPO's alignment with the Israeli Defence Force is a worrying example of artists getting (perhaps too?) closely involved in politics. I grant you, art and politics can't and shouldn't be entirely separated, but artists lose their ability (maybe even their right) to comment on politics when they get too closely involved. The IPO is quite right to promote Israel's artistic achievements internationally, but performing morale-boosting concerts for the troops (as the IPO has been doing since 1942) implies a condoning of the actions of those troops. Much as I'd like to keep this performance of Bruch's Violin Concerto separate from Israel's encroachment of the West Bank, the IPO itself has made that difficult with their IDF concerts. The Palestinian protest last night has at least been successful in bringing the connection between the two to light.

When I say the Proms is an event for cultured, civilised people, it's worth pointing out that those protesting against the performance aren't themselves uncultured. Far from it; their in-hall protest included what one audience member described as 'singing to the tune of Beethoven's Ode to Joy' – Beethoven's Ninth Symphony features the words of Schiller's poem, To Joy, in its fourth movement. While I can't help thinking that disrupting a classical music concert inside the hall itself runs the risk of making your protest look churlish (dare I say philistine?), using Beethoven's Ninth – with its overarching theme of brotherly love and the constant struggle to improve the human condition – redeems that cause immeasurably.

Thanks to Boeke, for the image of the Royal Albert Hall on Flickr.

Some advice for journalists in the post-News of the World world

Some advice to journalists in the post-News of the World world; To Hack or not to Hack

Dear Journalists,

so, phone-hacking, eh? News of the World, huh? Well, that all blew up in their faces a bit. Or someone's faces anyway, I gather the actual culprits had already left (of course they had, of course). But, look, there are lessons to be learned here – just listen to Ed Miliband bang on about the lessons for everyone to learn when he was on Newsnight on Friday. And if Miliband Jnr's spotted them...

Where journalists went wrong here was in their choice of target (aside from the phone-hacking thing being illegal at the best of times). I mean, we hardly cared about an actor or Deputy Prime Minister getting hacked, but you go for a missing schoolgirl's phone and the nation's up in arms. It may be a cliché, but we do seem to love an underdog in this country. Target the powerful and we'll let you off. Target the vulnerable and we'll bite your hand off...or at least write strongly worded letters to rival newspapers.

Thing is, there are three types of people whose stories sell newspapers (and yep, because newspapers – especially tabloids – are driven by what we'll pay to read, it's kind of the public's fault too, a bit). I turn to our old friend William Shakespeare to explain them.

“Some are born to publicity. Some achieve publicity, and some have publicity thrust upon them.”

To take that one at a time...

“Some are born to publicity”
For example, the Royal Family. It's not their fault (honest) and they can't help it (really); if your mum is the head of state, your every move will be of interest to someone. These people have no choice about the public spotlight, and we can only hope that through a lifetime's exposure to it, they'll learn to handle it (there's still time for Prince Philip, fingers crossed).
These people probably have stories worth telling, so go ahead and get them (legally), but tread carefully; they are influential and know powerful people...not for nothing has that family been 'in charge' for centuries.

“Some achieve publicity”
For example, actors or politicians. It is very much their fault that they're in the limelight; they've sought it. They're either performers (of some kind or another) who've actively pursued public interest for the sake of their careers, or they're politicians who've gone out of their way to get noticed and elected to public office. Once in public office or on stage/screen/radio/print, they are of course interesting to the public.
Reporting stories about those in public may well serve the public good, and those should be encouraged. If you've a story about a celebrity, great, go for it, they'll probably help you out because they think any publicity is good publicity (unless they try to gag you, in which case you know you're into something).

“Some have publicity thrust upon them”
For example, people caught up in national tragedies, disasters or victims of crime. These are people like the families bereaved after the July 7th terror attacks. They've got a story, certainly, but if they don't want to tell it you, tough. They haven't gone looking for publicity, it's come to find them (along with something horrible in their lives), and the last thing they need is some journalist poking around their inboxes.
Stories about these people are fair enough, but don't be insensitive about them.

Thing is, the British public – as journalists can't have failed to notice over the last few years – always need a hate figure, some group of people to target all our latent anger and aggression at. Maybe it's because we're so reserved and/or apathetic most of the time and we need to vent a bit. Not so long ago, it was bankers for screwing up the economy. Before that it was MPs for...well, various things – cash for honours, fiddling their expenses, generally getting things wrong etc etc.

This week, it's your turn. Take it on the chin. Have a look at Shakespeare's contribution above, then go and dig some dirt on people worth doing it over. Or find another hate figure...we'll lap up a good hate figure.

Tour de France 2011 Stage Eight

2011 Tour De France Stage Seven

Incendies [film review]

There are two stories running through Denis Villeneuve's award-winning French-Canadian film, Incendies. But, as is pointed out in a slightly strained mathematical analogy, one plus one sometimes equals one.

Based on a earlier play, Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad, Incendies takes its central characters, twins Jeanne and Simon Marwan (Mélissa Désormaeux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette), from Canada to Lebanon, following a quest set by their mother's Will in 2009. She, Nawal Marwan (Lubna Azabal - also seen in the BBC's Occupation) has insisted her grave remains unmarked until they find the father and brother whose existence they've only just discovered.

Meanwhile – as it were – the young Nawal, in 1970s Lebanon, is living through the upheaval and religious warfare rampant in the Middle East. Her brother kills her lover, before her newborn son is taken away for adoption. Azabal gives us a spirited heroine, contrasting with the shellshocked woman we've already seen her become in contemporary Canada at the shattering moment when those two stories collide. It's a powerful and moving story of ugly actions across a divided nation. Seriously, this is a period of history well worth reading up on in light of Incendies.

The twins uncover more and more of their mother's story, and inevitably discover more about their own origins than they're comfortable with. There's a human drive for knowledge, a curiosity in the face of a conundrum which keeps pushing the twins inexorably onwards. They don't know it, but it's a quest for self-knowledge as much as it is a quest for their father and brother. The tight plotting and human thirst for knowledge in Incendies wouldn't be out of place in a Greek tragedy, and here it lends Incendies a throbbing ache in its heart; humans can be so curious they'll find things they don't want to know.

In fact, there's definitely something Oedipal about that missing brother, taken as he is just after having his ankle tattooed. The tattoo is one marker allowing us to follow his life in snapshots through the same war that his mother survives. It's a war that hardens him, and Incendies doesn't shy away from the acts of brutality committed, though always leaving just enough unseen and unsaid for the blanks to be filled in. That said, the order of events is masterfully handled in a way to make Greek tragedians spin in their graves, but to deliver a full-on shock to the modern audience.

A film that starts as powerfully as Incendies could build to something angry, something bereft of hope. The first five minutes leave the viewer fixed firmly in the gaze of a young boy (with a tattooed ankle) whose hair is being shaved by soldiers conscripting an orphanage. His eyes appeal for outside help even while defiance shines from them – how like his mother, later imprisoned and raped by the militia.


But what finally comes out of Incendies is forgiveness and the unbreakable love of family. Incendies teaches us that humanity can somehow overcome the ugliness it creates. Or at least that a family may do so.

BBC Question Time and Victoria Wood with Chris Evans

BBC Question Time from Huddersfield on BBC One (23rd June 2011)

As always, David Dimbley's high-brow panel show depends upon its guests and audience questions. This week the panel included Tory backbencher John Redwood, economist-turned-Labour MP Rachel Reeves, Lib Dem Transport Minister Norman Baker, David Mitchell and – increasingly inexplicably – Fern Britton. Oh, and Dimbleby's lurid green tie, always something to watch for in itself. Redwood got off to a shaky start, but once into his stride became a remarkably calm and patient panellist in an increasingly heated debate (Thatcher got some praise, which in the north was never going to get a positive response). Reeves had a habit of addressing her answers directly to one person – her gaze unwavering and unblinking, terrifyingly like an automaton. But the three politicians kept up a lively and interesting debate through the hour, but Mitchell and Britton...well, someone must have thought it was going to be a good idea for them to appear on BBC Question Time. Comedians on this show usually just throw out digs at politicians and do a bit of low-level rabble-rousing, but Mitchell – who could be expected to make sensible points – was lost without a script and toed a disappointingly careful line. Britton, meanwhile, worried that she sounded 'wishy-washy'. She was right to worry.

Victoria Wood and Chris Evans on Radio 2 (24th June 2011)

This should have been great. Chris Evans interviewing Victoria Wood (CBE) on his Radio 2 Breakfast Show really should have been great. Wood's funny, and Evans is experienced as an interviewer usually able to get on well with guests. But today, he sounded out of his depth, despite his usual boyish enthusiasm for life and his guest. Wood sounded like she didn't want to be there, and was talking to someone who just didn't get her. “Why would you start writing a play?” Evans yapped, joyously. “Well, first of all, because someone asks you to. I don't think you would otherwise” Wood replied (woodenly – sorry for the pun). He asked if she had been the first to write funny songs, leading Wood to patiently explain about a few people who'd been doing the same thing earlier (like the wonderful Jake Thackray). They ended awkwardly with a discussion about how she treated interviewers, but the worst moment was when Evans asked if she'd ever work with Richard Stilgoe. She told him that he'd not understood her at all if he thought she'd enjoy doing that...

I leave you with Victoria Wood and Jake Thackray: The Ballad of Barry and Freda and Pass Milord the Rooster Juice.

Artistic Director's Note to Merge 2011

They say that a band's second album is always the hardest, the 'difficult second album', so I like to think of Merge 2011 as the 'difficult second Festival'. Once we've got through that, we should be ready to take over the world and be as all-conquering as [insert your favourite band's name here].

Last year's Festival involved just over one hundred students as participants, and this year we've been even more ambitious. The Festival is split across several host venues and now happens over four days. It's all been designed to allow any audience member to see just about everything on offer. You could also look at our lovely little website, www.mergearts.org.uk.

There's a lot of stuff, so have a look around. We've got theatre, jazz, classical music, poetry, dance, performance art, workshops, burlesque, visual art...and it's all about showing off Hull's artistic scene.

Like any good band leader, I should thank the band. The Festival needs several people working hard on it through the year, and those people are listed below. I'm grateful to all of them. Once again, the University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has funded the Festival, and we're again grateful for their generosity in doing so.

The Merge band has also relied on our host venues for somewhere to put our second album; this year they are the Albemarle Music Centre, Fruit and the Ringside. We'd like to thank staff at each for their hard work and patience over the last year.

For Merge 2011 we experimented with some run-up events called EarlyMerge, which were hosted by the Haworth Arms, Pave, Hull's History Centre and the Ringside, while workshops have been hosted by Hull College – so we extend our thanks to them too.

Finally, can I thank you for coming along? I hope you find at least one performance or artwork that really makes you think and shows that Hull has artistic talent to be proud of. That would be a good legacy for this year's Festival.

Once again, thank you for coming – have a look around, see some shows, and I hope to see you for next year's Festival.

Richard T. Watson, Artistic Director

PS. Enjoy the album!

The Merge Arts Festival is:

Artistic Director: Richard T. Watson

Finance Director/Co-Producer: Alison Best

Technical Directors: Jon Cole & Adam Foley

Publicity Director: Rachael Abbey

Education Director: Zoe Hughes

Designer: Will Langdale

With special thanks to:

Professor Valerie Sanders and the University of Hull's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Sarah-Jane Dickenson and staff at the University's Department of Music and Drama

Chris Maynard and staff at the Albemarle Music Centre

Dean Shakespeare and staff at Fruit

Darren Bunting, Anna Fox and staff at the Ringside

Arike Oke and staff at the Hull History Centre

Staff at the Haworth Arms and Pave bar

Jamie McGarry

Lucy Thurlow, Hayley Nikolay and staff at Hull College

Simon Bedford and Hoipolloi Theatre

Keira Walker

Janet Pearce and Marianne Lewsley-Stier

Jonno Witts

Elizabeth Coombs

The Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn

Mapping The City in Hull (starting at Hull Truck)

I'm walking down a street, holding a book. The book's about the paradoxes of logic, and the street is one I've walked along several times, but it's never looked like this before. It's never sparked these particular thoughts before.

That's the beauty of SlungLow's Mapping The City project for the city of Hull. It takes spaces within the city and transforms them, largely in the minds of the spectators, into wholly different spaces. Twenty minutes later, those same people are in the same space, and it means something new again. Mapping The City presents its audience with three connected stories, dotted around Hull, and the first lays the groundwork well by introducing the idea of memories ambushing a man in the street. Think of all those times that something seen in the street has triggered an old memory, one with no relevance to the rest of your day. SlungLow's Mapping The City is full of moments like these, moments when the place you're in, the 'here', influences thought and when thought influences and changes your 'here'.

A small audience troops around Hull's streets, marked out by the earphones clamped on their heads and relaying the speech of the actors they follow. Occasionally, down side streets they catch glimpses of someone carrying an oil lantern, or of a suited man watching, waiting, biding his time. In the company of a guiding figure, the intrepid audience is mapping the city of Hull in their own minds. We criss-cross over the same few streets, in Hull's old fruit market area, each time investing what we see with our special meaning. As one guide tells us, the tools we apply to people-watching ('trainspotting for the soul') are from our own experiences.

Those people with the lanterns should serve as a reminder that our journey around Hull's streets, mapping that city, are part of something much larger, something difficult to understand from our own limited perspective. The second of the three scripts that make up Mapping The City stresses this point when its professorial guide tells his audience about the human habit of thinking of ourselves as being at the centre of a universe that is infinitely complex – it's helpful in small things, like walking, but much less helpful for understanding how the universe actually works.

The same is true of SlungLow's sprawling production. Though it rarely strays from roughly the same geographical area (Hull's old fruit market and marina) it's a huge logistical challenge, and one that's impossible to fully grasp from an audience perspective. SlungLow make it all look so fiendishly easy. Little moments happen that seem almost accidental – a girl passes a bus at just the right moment – but have been planned well in advance, the whole coincidence stage-managed. There is much more going on than meets the eye. Smoothly, ushers display signs advising us to remove our headphones and 'enter the vehicle', which turns out to be a line of taxis, parked silently waiting and perfectly subtle in their transportation of the audience to the soup caravan. (Yes, there's a soup caravan – isn't that brilliant?)

Whether travelling on foot, by bus or in a fleet of taxis, the audience's attention is almost entirely centred on the performers whose words come direct to their ears. Sometimes that's to the detriment of things like balance and walking on cobblestones becomes especially tricky, because you aren't really looking where you're going. Instead, audiences almost blindly follow the voices, sometimes down the same street as the last performer, but a street this time endowed with an entirely different set of meanings.

Bemused local Hullians watch, taking photos and videos, as a united group walks past, headphones on, focus intently on the couple arguing ahead of them. The audience becomes as worthy of spectator interest as the actors, and sometimes we get more attention. Mapping The City really is theatre for the city, and Hull doesn't know how lucky it is to have this going on.

SlungLow have also been disarmingly open about the process of setting up Mapping The City, and their conversion of some of Hull's warehouse space. See their blog, photos and tweets on @SlungLow.

RashDash Theatre Interview for Noises Off 2011

In which Abbi and Helen from RashDash answered my questions in an interview for NSDF's magazine, Noises Off.

---------------------------------------------------------------

'We’ve set up an installation in Scarborough college,' says Abbi Greenland, of visiting artists RashDash Theatre. 'It’s essentially a play den where you can come and have fun for half an hour. Letting yourself go and finding an unleashed physicality is an essential aspect of our work. The space we’ve created gives everyone a chance to do that in a non-threatening un-scary way. There's also a film showing on Friday at 5pm for those who’ve come along during the week.'

RashDash Theatre (Greenland and Helen Goalen, as well as collaborators including Marc Graham and various musicians) was formed by students at the University of Hull's Drama Department, who have been producing and touring their own work since 2008. The company shares a ' desire to make work that formally encompasses music, physicality, drama and story'. They're also visiting artists at this year's Festival; their recent Fringe First award-winning show, Another Someone, will be performed on Thursday in the Spa Theatre at 10pm.

RashDash first came to NSDF in 2008 with their selected show Strict Machine (which 'wasn’t sophisticated thematically or formally') and then again with another selected show in 2009, Never Enough ('a development of what Strict Machine had been').

Their work has been described as feminist and funny, a description they are perfectly happy with: 'A show should always have at least one laugh, no? We’re both happy to be labelled feminist, although sometimes it puts people off... Being funny is a good way of getting round that. Our new show is feminist and funny, we hope. And whether it’s feminist or not – our stories are always told from a female perspective - because that’s who we are and that’s what we know. Our new show [Scary Gorgeous] is political, Another Someone isn't. We make shows about things that we care about at the time, and if that’s political, then the show is political.'

None of RashDash's shows are easily pinned down to one performance genre, often including dance and live music as well as theatre. 'We’ve never had a finished script before entering the rehearsal room so we’ll often switch between writing, choreographing and rehearsing scenes in one session. The musical side of our work is probably the most enjoyable element, having a group of people jamming out harmonies/parts is just a lot of fun and always a welcome break'.

The last few months have been busy for RashDash, and the future doesn't involve much slowing down. They're touring Another Someone across the UK, and previewing their new show, Scary Gorgeous. It's 'about raunch culture and porn. We wanted to know what people find sexy because we have a sneaky suspicion that the ways in which we try to be sexy and the things we find sexy often have very little to do with pleasurable sex.'

One thing NSDF is so good at is promoting and assisting upcoming new companies, and RashDash is one such company. 'it was great to meet the selectors and the visiting artists, who were encouraging and lovely, but the best bit was seeing other student shows. There was some great stuff going on, really different kinds of shows to those we’d seen before and really different to the kind of thing we were seeing at Uni. It made us hungry to make something better and different'. But selected performers aren't the only ones to benefit from the opportunities the Festival offers; anyone who's here has a chance to meet those people and see those shows.

For companies hoping to follow a similar route to them, RashDash have this advice:

'Keep going. It is difficult and at times you may feel ridiculous and like you shouldn’t be doing it, but if you’re passionate enough about making shows you will make it work.

Be honest with yourself about what you’re good at and what you’re not. Find people who are better than you at the stuff you’re not good at. This is a big lesson we are currently learning.
Work with people you like. If they’re brilliant but you don’t like them, it probably won’t work. '

I asked Abbi and Helen if there was any one thing they would recommend doing while in Scarborough. Their suggestion was 'paddling'...so go and enjoy some paddling.

Line at NSDF11 (from Noises Off)

The West is an impatient society. Increasingly it's also a highly individualistic society, with a rising determination to be first, to get to places quickly and to do so ahead of anyone else. It's a society where many do in fact want their fifteen minutes of fame – a society where the phrase 'me me me' really applies.

Each of the five characters (six, if you count Mozart) in Israel Horovitz's play Line are trying to get to the front of their eponymous line. It's not quite a bus queue (unless it's an especially cosmic bus), and must be a particularly significant opening of Ikea if it is one of those events that people queue for en masse. Whatever it is, these five Americans are really eager to be first. Second is apparently alright, but only as a springboard to first.

When a character reaches the front of the queue (doesn't really matter which one; their reactions are fairly similar), it tends to result in euphoria and gloating. So the front of that queue is clearly pretty important, and characters' attempts to reach the hallowed end of the gaffer tape provide the impetus to what passes for a plot in Horovitz's script.

When Dan Wood (playing Fleming) is hanging about in first place before anyone else gets there, Line looks like it's going to give us an examination of human behaviour while waiting. Maybe an exploration of human social interaction and how concepts of personal/mental space are affected by the arrival of new people to their territory (for want of a better word).

And – in a way – that is what York's students do give us. But Line is an inflated version of that, an overblown depiction with a set of overblown characters. It's no incisive dissection of human attitudes or interaction, if only because everything is so over the top; there is no reason given for why first place is so important to these five people.

But that implies there's a bigger picture that we as an audience aren't being made aware of (and to be honest, the characters don't seem too sure of exactly what they're waiting for, other than that it is not only important but also just that they be first). The line becomes much more than just a strip of gaffer, and the struggle for first place becomes a struggle for success in life.

Soft Target? Preview piece for Noises Off 2011

If you look at the first page of your Festival program, you'll find a welcoming note from the Festival's patron Sir Alan Ayckbourn, former Artistic Director of the Stephen Joseph Theatre (by the train station, don't worry, you'll get to know it).

As well as welcoming us all to Scarborough for the week, he tells us that "publicly funded theatre is in crisis." He says this is because "inevitably the arts are a soft target" in times of financial cutbacks.

In a way he's got a point; it's easy to decide that the arts have limited practical value when you're struggling to fund the nation's schools, hospitals and defence. I'm not going to go back over the arguments about the arts being more than the sum of their parts, and a value greater than its up-front cost. At a National Student Drama Festival, rehearsing those arguments would (I hope) be preaching to the choir. (Anyway, Sir Alan goes through some of the points in his welcome - go read it).

But is Sir Alan in danger of writing off the arts as unable to defend themselves? Is he right to say that they (and by extension the artists) are undefended? Are our artists push-overs, so reliant on the dripfeeding of public subsidy that they'll all wither away once that invigorating nectar is withdrawn? Are we really Samson once Deliah had cut his hair off ?

If anything, the arts is the area of society that is most able to speak up for itself. We're the ones with the public stage to speak from (literally, in the case of theatre organisations). The Southwark Playhouse's Theatre Uncut performances have demonstrated that theatre - even if not the rest of the arts world - can become organised in anti-cuts activity that raises our voices in opposition.

Recently, Alexander Wright from Belt Up Theatre (NSDF selected company in 2008, NSDF visiting artists 2010) wrote a blog in which he says that "The very act of [...] putting on a show like The Beggar's Opera [...] is for me, an act of protest" - he wants the show to say: ''Look at what we are doing. We are young and able to do this because all the people around us have made it possible. And you, Mr Cameron, and you, Mr Clegg, are going to slowly burn us to the ground.

Well, if you do, we're are going to go down kicking and screaming and making a bloody big fuss."

That's not an arts scene withering away when the tap of the public funding is turned off. Wright says that it will be "very, very sad" if spending cuts kill off upcoming artists. He's right, but spending cuts will be so much more damaging if we as artists allow that attitude of "it's very sad" to take hold.

I want to see young theatre companies, young dance companies, young artists doing more than bemoaning their undersubsidised fate. Let's not see the whole "ConDem" thing as a problem, but as an opportunity. Now is the time for young companies to show off their great strengths: imagination, adaptability, resilience, flexibility, vigour.

Reduced funding should make us try harder for other types of funding, and should force us to

use our imaginations for that as well as in our art. Keep costs down (easier for us than for bigger, older organisations) and stay nimble financially We have something to make us angry (instead of sad, please), something to respond to, something to fire us up - and we've got the imaginative and artistic firepower to say something about it.

I agree when Sir Alan says that "theatre is important" and perhaps I even agree when he says "publicly funded theatre is in crisis" - but he shouldn't write off the arts as defenceless quite so easily.

Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You @ The Junction

It’s not a show about a déjà vu victim experiencing an explosion again and again. Honestly. The title might make it sound like that, but honestly, Molly Naylor’s Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You is a richer performance than that. Strictly speaking, it’s a spoken word performance, but so much emphasis is there on the performance aspect that it feels much more like a one-woman play than anything else.

Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You is a story about being blown up, certainly. In fact, that’s pretty much all you get. The staging is stripped back so far that you’ve only got that story on stage – barely any clutter, one performer and maybe three projections. So the story is paramount, and its environment lends itself to the art of listening, the art of really paying attention to the words (perhaps not surprising for a poem presented as drama).

Molly Naylor, speaking those words, tells her audience about the seventh day in July, 2005, when she got blown up on the Tube at Aldgate station. She was actually relatively unscathed – physically – and instead picked up the glamour of the survivor, the terrorist victim who walked away. Frankly, it’s the glamour she’d been craving up until that point, and maybe this is representative of a generation; not deliberately perhaps, but this idea of a generation seeking the glamour of Hollywood, then allowing a traumatic event to serve as scapegoat for all that’s wrong in their lives, certainly strikes a chord.

Alright, so ‘scapegoat’ is perhaps a little unfair. It’s not as though Naylor blames all her failings (lack of ambition, apathy, selfishness) on the bombings of July 7th. Rather, the bombing becomes a filter through which she (and we) can see things differently. The bombing shines light on aspects of her life that we could already see, but maybe not clearly. So, sure, she’s drifting through life in a happy-go-lucky way before the bombing, but this is only really obvious once the ‘happy’ has been removed and we can all question the ‘lucky’. Her lack of ambition comes strikingly forward when she flees London to rural Wales, but her dead-end jobs before then should have been giveaways.

But what I came back to time and again in Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You was those words. Molly Naylor keeps up a steady stream of them and they fill the black box space. Maybe she doesn’t need the projections to set her locations; the words are enough. This script (really a poem) sings with the rhythmic power of poetry, it’s highly lyrical and sometimes self-consciously so. The fact that it’s a poem being performed like a monologue (it’s not staged like a spoken word performance) means that Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You suffers slightly in a theatre – these words have to spoken in a certain way for the poetry to work – because there’s a certain lack of spontaneity. Naylor’s easy-going, improvised opening few words of greeting (and closing words, to plug her book of the show) serve only to make her rehearsed, scripted tone of voice even more obvious.

Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think Of You is a self-consciously theatrical staging of a highly lyrical rendition of the July 7th bombings and their aftermath. It’s touching, certainly, occasionally funny, sometimes awkward but always poetic and heartfelt.

Howl [film review]

What is great art? How are you going to define literary merit? What things do you look for to decide that a piece of art is good, great, indifferent or simply bad? You had better be ready with a least an idea of answers to those questions.

Rob Epstein’s and Jeffrey Friedman’s film Howl focuses on and takes its title from Allen Ginsberg’s four part poem, Howl, in which Ginsberg articulates his vision of the world in 1955. It’s not an especially positive vision, following the travels of Carl Solomon, whom Ginsberg met when both men were patients in a mental health institute. You should probably read it yourself, but in Allen Ginsberg’s nasal, drawn-out voice with its curious cadences; it sounds better that way, and Ginsberg’s poetry is very aural. A lot of poetry works best when performed rather than read silently (some might say a poem stands or falls on its performance – and maybe that’s a way of defining great art in poetry), but this is especially true of Ginsberg’s work.

Howl brought Ginsberg to public attention, and even more so when it landed the publisher in court two years later for breaching obscenity laws. It was Howl that launched Ginsberg onto his journey to becoming, as the film Howl claims, one of the most celebrated poets of the Twentieth Century.

Obscenity trials are great for getting the debating juices flowing. The arguments involved are usually much bigger than the works of art that initially sparked them off. The trial – perhaps very publicly – becomes a verbal battlefield for two sides in wars between conservative and liberal thinking, between upholding moral standards and freedom of speech, between adult seriousness and youthful artistic expression.

The film Howl documents the poem Howl’s trial on grounds of obscenity, interspersed with an interview with Allen Ginsberg (James Franco) and animated renderings of the poem itself. Jon Hamm (he of Mad Men fame) defends the literary merit of Ginsberg’s poem (as well as arguing over what constitutes literary merit) accusations that the poem is puerile and lacks the redeeming qualities found in ‘great’ art.

I put it to you that great art creates its own form and is original in that respect. It should have no precursor, no obvious inspiration that has been altered to suit the writer’s purpose (we’re talking about literature, even though we say ‘art’).

But doesn’t that view overlook the fact that great art is often great because it nods to the formal rules, then breaks or twists them, and experiments with them creatively? Isn’t it true that individual works of art are rarely entirely unique, but often borrow from others? And isn’t literary merit fairly subjective anyway? Isn’t art something that can be appreciated by one person even if not by the next? Answers on a postcard please.



Poetry – and I don’t just mean Allen Ginsberg’s poetry – is all about the words creating images for an audience (of readers or listeners). It’s painting pictures with sound , rhythm and cadence, in a way that prose can’t quite manage (as one of Howl’s advocates explains in the trial). By animating Ginsberg’s words, Howl the film seems to miss the point of poetry. Epstein and Friedman imply that Ginsberg’s words alone – ably performed by Franco – aren’t enough to conjure images of the god Moloch, or of the thousand blind windows of his eyes, or of the best minds of Ginsberg’s generation drifting through life and reeling from the effects of World War Two. It seems only animation can convey the epic scope of Ginsberg’s Howl. The sexual exploits of his friend (the cocksman, the Adonis of Denver) and the cosmic search for meaning undergone by Solomon and humanity can apparently not be appreciated in words without us having them visualised for us. Stunning as the animation is, it is reductive and undermines the power of Ginsberg’s howl.

I leave you with another question: is the literary critic a better judge of whether art is obscene, or is the average reader (whoever that is) a better judge? That’s a question thrown up late on in Howl, and not really covered.

One more: is a film a great piece of art if it raises more questions than it answers, eloquently defends free speech, probes at our definitions of what constitutes ‘merit’ and ‘great’ and also fires up the imagination through poetry and imagery? That’s Howl, helped out by Allen Ginsberg – make up your own mind (it’d be in line with Ginsberg’s approval of free thought and individual expression).

An Open Letter to Hull City Council about Arts Funding and their Proposed Budget

Dear Hull City Council,

Please consider this an open letter in response to the Revenue Proposed Budget 2011-12 you are currently considering.

There are huge savings to be made, in many areas, and I would encourage the Council to extend and enhance links with the local Voluntary and Community Sector. Helping newer organisations to 'be better placed to bid for new services' could be especially helpful in the coming years, particularly if Hull is to be a city that retains and attracts young professionals (the key demographic group for a 'thriving city centre economy' – as mentioned in your proposed Priority C). It is these groups and these people that are the partners most able to bring the 'best and most cost effective ways to improve the lives of the people of Hull' (Hull City Council's vision over the next three years).

On the subject of Priority C ('Making Hull a place where people are proud to live and work'), mainly on the point about making Hull a place to visit, I do feel that the proposed budget neglects provision for the arts and culture of Hull. As someone who has lived in Hull and Cambridge, I'd like to draw your attention to the attitude taken by Cambridge City Council toward their arts provision. I admit there are significant differences between the two cities, but some statements in the proposed Cambridge budget carry weight for Hull too. For example: 'The arts provide experiences that bring people together and inspire them. Without them Cambridge would be a less desirable place to live, work and visit.' [my emphasis] – the proposal goes on to state that 'The arts provide a platform to celebrate and showcase our local cultural diversity and create a sense of excitement and pride in our city'. If Hull City Council wants to instil a sense of pride in Hull – making people 'proud to live and work' here – then they cannot overlook the contribution made by the arts in Hull.

But, as Cambridge City Council has recognised, the arts offer more than civic pride; they provide experiences too, experiences that bind communities together (the Freedom and Vista Festivals comes to mind) and that inspire people and help them to reach their potential. This is especially true with children and young people – those saddled with the debts passed on in this spending review, and I would urge the Council to hold young people's interests very much at heart when implementing cuts to their inheritance. The Council rightly identifies 'Giving children and young people the best start, and everyone the opportunity to achieve their potential' as Priority B of their proposed budget.

The Council is no doubt already aware of various pieces of research demonstrating the benefit of children having an active engagement in culture and their surroundings. They must also be aware of the DCMS Taking Part survey which found that 'in inner city areas those who participated in culture were 10% more likely to be satisfied with where they live' – linking culture with civic pride again.

The Council has been already been involved with projects that have helped children's cultural engagement from an early age, and it is achievements like that – and other signs of Hull's regeneration – that are likely to suffer from cuts. Equally, they are precisely the achievements that should be safeguarded and built upon. A city's children are its future, and without the young people the city has no future. If Hull is to be an aspiring city, a city worthy of pride, its youth has to be stimulated, involved and engaged in the arts and in culture and in sport and in education. These are the things worth building on, for the sake of our youth and for their future (which is, after all, our future).

I don't see this letter as a call for greater investment in Hull's culture, nor as a cry for ring-fencing of cultural spending; maybe it's a point in a larger debate about arts funding and public service cuts in general. What I'm really asking is that the Council strengthens its bonds with charities, the Voluntary and Communities Sector, cultural organisations, the education sector and local artists. Ask us what we can do and how we want to help (I admit to a vested interest here...). Encourage and support the newer organisations, work with the established ones, help them to help each other. Deliver on the budget's commitment to 'support areas of the community who wish to develop services and activities'. In these difficult economic times, it is only by working together that we can hope to secure a decent future for this city and for the young people in it.

Thank you for reading,

Richard T. Watson,

Artistic Director, Merge Arts Festival

twitter.com/merge_arts_fest

artisticdirector@mergearts.org.uk

The arts inspire us and lead us to a deeper engagement with each other and the world we live in. They are not the icing on the cake of a community; they are one of the critical ingredients that binds it together.
Rod Cantrill, Executive Councillor for Arts & Recreation, Cambridge City Council

Why Burlesque isn't just stripping for posh people

Thought dead for the last half century or so, burlesque as an artform has been undergoing a revival in recent years. That's probably most noticeable in 2010's Cher and Christina Aguilera film, Burlesque, though that's only the most recent outbreak of burlesque into mainstream culture.

I realise I'm a bit late on this, but it's been a thought bubbling away for a while. I blame these Guardian articles: http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2010/dec/13/burlesque-stripping-posh-empowering and http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/dec/13/burlesque-dita-von-teese-christina-aguilera

Burlesque has caused controversy – most recently in Cambridge – mainly on the grounds that women taking their clothes off for money from dirty old men is distasteful and a regressive step for the feminist movement. That's no doubt true; attaching commercial value to displays of a woman's body is a clear case of objectifying women. There's a feeling that burlesque bars are simply upmarket strip joints, exploiting young women in much the same way as a brothel would.

But to accuse burlesque performances of committing this act is to miss the point of burlesque, in both its earlier and its modern form. As various opponents and insiders have pointed out, early burlesque was satirical, a light relief that used things like cross-dressing as a way of bursting the pomposity of the ruling classes. In its more modern form, burlesque can be easily confused with striptease, but there are significant differences. It's also a misinformed approach to associate all burlesque with nudity; burlesque embraces a variety of artforms, and provocative dance is only one of those.

The satire element may not be so prominent in modern burlesque, but the idea of treating the performance as an art form certainly is. For a start, the amateur nature of many burlesque performers contrasts them with the strippers that Laura Barnett reckons are getting money furtively stuffed into their garters. But, deep down, burlesque is a different activity to stripping – even the acts that involve some clothes coming off. The two activities have different objectives and different approaches, even different audiences.

A striptrease in a strip joint is a commercial venture, where the stripper is earning money (not necessarily for herself), in exchange for stripping. The point is to make her male audience want to sleep with her, and pay more money to gain visual material for their own imaginings. The striptease offers the male audience member the hope that he could sleep with the stripper – or at least get a good idea of what it would look like (and in some cases, paying enough means that his dream comes true). The stripper has to offer everything up before the audience gets bored, give them what they want and get to the point. It falls apart if the audience doesn't believe she'd go all the way.

The art of a burlesque erotic dance lies in the restraint and the control, the titillation and

knowing when enough is enough.

Amateur performers aim to entertain, rather than arouse.

Their mixed-gender audience doesn't need to be attracted to the performer, and that's where the empowerment can come in; performers needn't be svelte paragons of beauty (however you define beauty). More importantly, the burlesque erotic dance is about giving the audience a little bit of what they want – in a light-hearted way, without the earnestness of the striptease – gradually. The performer plays with the audience, working them up, and then judges the right moment to withdraw leaving them wanting more without feeling that they've missed out. Unlike stripping, a burlesque performance doesn't need the audience's gratification.

The two performances have superficial similarities, but the underlying intentions and outcomes are different; it's a bit like the difference between having sex and making love.

Images courtesy of No Saints and Anna Fox, The Ringside