Artistic Director's Welcome to Merge2012: Our City, Our Story

Hello, and welcome to the third Merge Arts Festival - Merge2012: Our City, Our Story. Thanks for coming along.

This year's Festival has been inspired by the archives held at Hull History Centre. There's a wealth of information from Hull's rich past in there and it's well worth a visit.

We hope Merge2012 brings together yet more people in a celebration of the city's talent and heritage. You'll see the archives reflected in our centrepiece event, Merge @ Hull City Hall, our evening concert featuring a selection of local (Hull, the East Riding and Lincolnshire) folk songs housed in the archives. There's also Winifred: A Dramatic Portrait, which dramatises the life of local author Winifred Holtby. Other events in our program also go some way to celebrating local talent and local heritage.

This is our biggest festival yet, and once again I am grateful to a wide range of people for their support. Many of them are named in this brochure, but a few deserve a special mention. The University of Hull's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences has again been generous in their support, and we recognise generous support from the City Council in various guises. We'd also like to thank our venues, the City Hall, Hartley's Tap and NAPA, for their support and generous hosting. Other people worthy of special mention are listed along with Merge's staff.

We hope this year's program inspires and educates. 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, in culture, in sport and in education. With the way things are going, they’re going to need all the inspiration they can get.

I hope you find something of interest, something to make you think, or something you didn't know (or all of the above!). You can leave us feedback on our Facebook or Twitter, or email us on info@mergearts.org.uk.

Please, get yourself a drink, and enjoy the Festival!

Thanks,
Richard T. Watson
Artistic Director | Merge Arts Festival


Merge is:
Artistic Director: Richard T. Watson

Production Manager: Stefan Ward-Caddle

Publicity Director: Portia Ellis-Woods

Publicity Assistant: Becka Willougby

Education Director: Zoe Hughes

Design by: Becka Willoughby, Will Langdale & Richard T. Watson

With special thanks to:

Professor Alison Yarrington and the University of Hull’s Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
Marianne Lewsley-Stier and iHull
Martin Taylor and staff at the Hull History Centre
Louise Yates and the City Arts Unit
Claire Balfour and staff at Hull City Hall
Barbara Dawson and staff at Northern Academy of Performing Arts
Staff at Hartley’s Tap
Paul Hunter and the New Adelphi Club
Steve Gardham
John Connolly and Bill Meek
Andrew Penny
Dr Jane Thomas & Professor Marion Shaw
Piaf Knight
Lisa Hey
Dale Christmas
Keira Walker
Professor John Stringer
John Morrison
Ian Watson
Felix Hodcroft
Jamie McGarry and Valley Press
Ashley Fisher
Will Langdale
Jonno Witts
Elizabeth Coombs Photography
Sarah Clinch and Hull CVS
The Tricycle Theatre, Kilburn

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.

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

Another Look at Larkin - from December 2009's Hullfire

This December marks twenty-four years since the death of internationally-renowned poet and Hull Uni librarian Philip Larkin. Which means that 2010 is the important twenty-fifth anniversary, and the University is teaming up with the Philip Larkin Society, Visit Hull and East Yorkshire and Hull City Council to celebrate.

Professor James Booth, Head of the English Department and Literary Advisor to the Philip Larkin Society, told me that Larkin “is the purest of lyric poets, he always writes about Life, Death, Love [...] That gives him his universal quality.” Larkin's string of awards from 1972-84 confirmed his international reputation, and he has recently been declared both the nation's favourite poet and the greatest post-war British writer. “He manages, and there's a certain magic to this, to choose the words of each of his poems in such a way that he copyrights ordinary words [...] when anybody now says 'they fuck you up, your mum and dad', everyone recognises it as a quote from Larkin!”

The celebrations – under the title Larkin 25: Another Look at Larkin – will run for twenty-five weeks, starting in June 2010 and ending at that twenty-fifth anniversary in December with the unveiling of a Larkin statue at the Paragon station. It's also worth looking out for the Plague of Toads that will strike Hull during Larkin 25 – dozens of huge, decorated fibreglass toads, popping up across the city – inspired by Larkin's Toads. Just imagine. Other events of interest include a series of University lectures from distinguished guests, including former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion. Elsewhere, there are plans for drama workshops at Hull Truck, jazz events (Larkin was a jazz critic for the Telegraph) and maybe a bus named after Larkin. More long-lasting will be the Larkin Trail, a tour of East Yorkshire's Larkin-related cultural spots, supported by a new History Centre which is going to house the University's archives on Larkin and Hull's history.

But what about the reputation Larkin seems to have gained as a racist, or a middle-class snob who looked down on Hull's locals? A quick trawl through the comments left on a Hull Daily Mail article about the proposed statue reveals a variety of opinion and some of it's quite hostile. But, like it or not, Larkin is an important cultural figure – for Britain, not just Hull – and he chose to spend thirty years of his life here. Midlander though he was, his is a name strongly linked with Hull and the University, and his later work is embedded firmly in the East Riding.

Quoting Larkin's poetic description of Hullians, Booth comments that “ I don't think it's accurate to say that it has any kind of middle-class condescension about it; there's a common humanity about it”. As for being racist, the Professor tells me “ If you look at his life, his actions, you realise actually he was a lifelong liberal humanist – not the right-wing bigot that he occasionally parodied himself as being”, and compares Larkin to the Roman orator Cicero, who also “ got into terrible trouble because he couldn't avoid a good joke [...] Larkin does this; when he sees the pithiest, most extreme version of putting something, he'll do it”. He was politically incorrect, but not a racist.

What's exciting about Larkin 25 (apart from those toads) is that the Steering Group, chaired by Hull Emeritus Professor Graham Chesters (g.chesters@hull.ac.uk), is keen to have new ideas suggested. Already there are various student projects (in drama, photography, art and music) across the city. As Chesters says, the list of commemorative events is 'far from closed!'.


http://twitter.com/philiplarkin25


http://www.larkin25.com/

Pub Quiz is Life @ Hull Truck

At last! A play on Hull Truck's main stage that doesn't wallow in Hull Victimisation Syndrome.

Richard Bean's Pub Quiz is Life comes as a minor breath of fresh air, after a few shows that have made much of Hull's perceived status (earned or otherwise) as a bit of a rubbish city, where the locals readily admit that the place is awful. Don't get me wrong, this play does have the odd symptom, but HVS is nowhere near the rampant disease it has been. We're talking a minor case of sniffles, rather than the recent bout of flu.

What Bean does instead is much better than the tack taken by Alan Plater and Rupert Creed. He mentioned in an post-show talkback that he thinks playwrights should 'lift up the rock and look at the bugs under it'. Rather than have middle-class, middle-aged folk bemoaning the state of their lives and city, Bean shows people living in that city – not all of them are working-class – and his characters actually do things.

His plot centres around Lee, a discharged squaddie fresh from Afghanistan who joins his father to form a pub quiz team. Also on the team is Woody – the man supplying Lee with cocaine to ease his father's MS – and Melissa, who works for a company aiming to regenerate Hull and make it a 'top ten town'...whatever one of those is. Already, you can see where the HVS symptoms are going to creep in. Oh, and Bunny – Lee's dad – is a retired dock worker. So plenty of chance for the old man to have friction with the young woman over the general state of Hull.

Unlike previous stage fictions of Hull – without wanting to continue comparing Pub Quiz... to other plays – this one manages to make some good points. The shouting about Afghanistan and Britain's right to be in the country may not be necessary, but the loss of fishing as an industry – and the subsequent loss of dignity and purpose for Hull's local male population – is as good a reason as any for the city's current degenerate state, and especially the high number of unemployed. Esther Hall (of BT advert fame) tries her best to make the argument that 'iconic footbridges' and shopping malls are an improvement sound plausible, but it just doesn't stand up to understandable anger. That this is anger Bean shares with the older men of Hull seems a reasonable assumption.

The strength of this production lies in its charting of the gradual corrupting of Lee. He starts off as a nice enough bloke, a married father with an eye for a good-looking lady, getting hold of small amounts of crack to ease his dad's illness. But the world he finds himself in on returning from Afghanistan makes him angry, cuts him off and seemingly rejects his hard-working father. The world – perhaps the nation – turns him into something else, not quite a monster but a feeling of revulsion is hard to avoid by the end. Unless you admire the determination and ruthlessness he exhibits, of course.

Another strong point is the pub landlady, Mabel, who asks the questions in a voice like gravel soaked in honey. She's a bit like Chaucer's Wife of Bath revelling in performing a mini-Cabaret act whilst plucking general knowledge questions from a glorious trail of smut. Picture that. Anecdotes about her eight husbands crop up throughout her questions over the weeks, and every now and then she has a song. And what a voice.

Interestingly, only one of the cast is from Hull, and some of their accents are patchy. Watch out for one particularly bad piece of casting in a drug-dealer played far too young, by someone too young (in a way, that's probably a compliment to the actress – or it would be if her accent were decipherable). Throughout, it feels as though the cast all need to loosen up a bit and relax; there's something to be said for deadpan delivery (see: Mabel) but it gets taken way too far here. The same can even be said of perhaps the worst onstage gunshot in the history of the north.

Tellingly, Bean also declared that he'd wanted a Hull play called 'Craptown', and this was probably it. So, while it's not quite suffering a full-on bout of HVS, there's definitely an acknowledgement of the symptoms...Bunny even complains that Luton got the official title ahead of Hull: “We was robbed!”

Where Bean succeeds is in keeping that a side-issue, and not a focus. Pub Quiz is Life is much more about British society as a whole than poor old Hull, and so much better for it.

Say it with Flowers at Hull Truck

Sometimes, every older person must make way for younger ones. Fresh blood has an irresistible allure, and eventually – hard as it may be – the older ones must move aside.

It's a hard fact of life, but one that must be learnt by the am dram group in Jane Thornton's new Hull Truck play, Say it with Flowers. The OAP thesps have lost their church hall rehearsal space to a young dance class, as the church hopes to give the young people 'a chance'. Mavis (61), of the Parish Players, is unimpressed with this and wonders who is giving the older people 'a chance'. She hasn't learnt that life lesson yet – despite her 61 years – nor does she realise that she's had her whole life for her chance, and has spent ten good years having that chance. Maybe it is time she let the kids have a go.

The lesson of young blood's appeal also needs to be learnt at Hull Truck itself. Without wanting to get back on the soapbox...Say it with Flowers is another safe Truck main stage play, their standard fare. It's a well-made play, one tailored to the Truck's loyal audience, one that does what you'd expect, ie. it gets laughs while telling its story. But it's hardly daring, innovative or new.

Artistic Director John Godber has directed his wife's play, which features a Hull couple whose marriage becomes increasingly shaky under suburban pressures. Another late middle-aged/elderly couple has one member house-bound by illness. There's a gay thespy-type – brilliant James Hornsby has fun being subtly camp – who seems to be prejudiced against and single. On the edges, a young Goth is at college. For the first time, I wondered if a major Hull Truck character would ever go off to University, or fall in love, or try to get an apprenticeship, or go house-hunting or clubbing. Or anything a young person would do. It seems that, at present, any main Hull Truck character on their main stage has to be at least 45 and is probably in a failing marriage rather than doing anything likely to lead to a wedding.

Don't get me wrong: as ever, Hull Truck has a solid, creditable production on its hands, one that keeps the laughs rippling and isn't scared to unleash pent-up suburban fury. The plot is pretty sedate, and Thornton seems content to let it trickle along rather than pick up any speed – despite sudden shifts is conversations. The set – as they often are at the Truck – is detailed and all-encompassing, spot-on, in fact. But we're still got a middle-class, middle-aged Hull onstage. Now, I live in that city, and there are an awful lot of people not in that category. Hull Truck is brilliant at showing the audience themselves onstage – that's why they keep coming back (some women behind me even talked about golf – how sedate and middle-of-the-road!) – but I for one would be much more impressed if every now and then those people saw someone else onstage.

On the night I went, the auditorium was barely half-full – the Truck surely can't afford to sell so few seats in their new venue. It looks like the theatre must learn the same lessons as the Parish Players.

Every Time it Rains @ Hull Truck

There can only be so many water puns a writer (like Rupert Creed, say) can slip into a script without them being noticed. Surely. But in his new play – Every Time it Rains (having its World Premier at Hull Truck right now) – Creed keeps a gentle trickle of them bubbling up from characters' mouths.

The fact that this is a World Premier at Hull Truck shouldn't come as a surprise; it's got so painfully local a feel, I doubt the Truck staff are exactly swimming in offers to tour it elsewhere. It's not just a story about floods – it's a story about Hull's flood in 2007. The one that the media submerged under stories of other floods around the country, a move followed by government recovery efforts which also focussed elsewhere. It forms part (along with the Truck's recent Confessions of a City Supporter) of a wave of victimisation felt by Hull's locals – they almost seem to be celebrating it, as they sink into self-jubilant victimhood.

But the Truck is very good at this sort of thing. Their shows consistently tap into the currents of feeling in this community and distil that community onto the stage. Every Time it Rains has five actors playing a stream of characters, all in some way affected by The Flood. So it feels like there's a lot of them onstage, and the almost constant flowing and shifting of characters creates a real feel of community and of change. There's the bulky copper who tried to rescue Michael Barnett, failed, and now suffers a life awash with guilt and flashbacks. Then Norman, and his wet drip of a wife, Maureen, whose bungalow doesn't stand a chance against the floodwaters – despite his careful preparations. Their neighbours are Gary and Claire, who have a much more proactive, materialistic attitude (once the enormity of the situation has sunk in for Gary) – they also have better rows. What Creed uses these characters – and other minor ones – for, is telling us all that The Flood was traumatic, people suffered, the systems in place couldn't cope, and no one cared about the poor little Hull folk. Essentially, The Flood results in Creed's characters pouring out an unremitting torrent of misery, each struggling to keep their head above the hassle surrounding them.

So, another Truck play to conform to the two unwritten Truck Rules: 1) All plays must play up to their own nature as theatrical performance, usually by having characters addressing the audience. 2) There must be audience manipulation in the last few minutes. 3) If a play has a distinct appeal to Hull folk, it gets the main stage – ideally, plays should also encourage the idea of Hull folk as put-upon and victimised.

The copper claims to be trying to tell a straightforward story, without saturating it with emotion. It seems to be Creed's intention too. Well, all those speeches dripping in sentimental piano music really put a damper on that!