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.

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'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.

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.

Whitehouse Institute at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

When a vicar stands up to give a sermon to a congregation, it doesn't usually get classed as drama. The drama lies outside of what the vicar says and outside of where it's said; out in the supernatural world.

When a tour rep stands up to greet their latest batch of tourists, it doesn't usually get classed as drama. The drama lies in the proposed holiday, the land waiting to be explored – the world outside of the tour rep's speech.

Both vicar and tour rep have learnt a set of words, ready to present to those listening to them. Their listeners hope to gain something from what they hear. The crowd has gathered to listen to them, and though the division between them is more informal than a theatre's normal fourth wall, there is still a noticeable degree of separation between them. It's not any different to a guided tour in an art gallery – like the one on offer at the Holbeck recently. As drama or theatre, the speeches given by curator Neil Bailey-Jones are barely different to those given by a vicar in church.

Such people are also less keen on witholding the secrets of their craft; in fact, conveying information is vital to their occupations. But the Manchester team behind Whitehouse Institute have been trying – with varying degrees of success – to impose a blanket of silence over their show. There's a big twist, that they'd like to keep from the Fest-going body – us lot, their audience. How they expect people not to talk about the show – at NSDF – is hard to grasp. By the way, the twist is the new artwork being replaced by a stark naked woman.

In some ways, it's a tired and worn-out idea that modern art as a movement is pointless and/or pretentious while its artists are too far up themselves to know anything of the outside world. Whitehouse Institute exposes this truism by parading it with glee. The curators of modern galleries also get gently satirised as people stuffed full of commonplace fact – this one leads a tour of the bleedingly obvious around the Uni campus – but that's another shallow idea, one that loses its humour value after being used more than twice. So at over an hour, that joke wore very thin.

Whitehouse Institute almost goes one better than these tired old art debates by giving protesters a voice – but absolutely no attempt at giving a clear, unified reason for the protest. It manages to expose that those oppose modern art as having no valid alternative to that which so aggravates them. There isn't exactly any original or interesting insight on these themes; merely a presentation of them that claims to be drama but fails to scale any such heights.

In fact, any audience member (and, yes, we punters were 'audience members', not 'gallery viewers' or any other such term) who wanted some drama out of their National Student Drama Festival's offering would have had more luck attending happenings outside of the event to which their paid-for ticket entitles them entry. By far the most interesting things happened outside of the gallery (protesters rattling the doors) and indeed outside of the event itself (the protests staged outside of the SJT). The Manchester team is to be commended on their marketing and publicity campaign (including articles – tying into the fiction of Tracey Hutcheson – in our own NOFF), which has become bigger than the performance itself. Or, then again, has the publicity become (part of?) the event?

On the down-side, such hype meant that the only way that Whitehouse Institute could have not been an anti-climax was if the protesters had burnt the gallery to the ground. Now that would have been a twist worth keeping hidden.

The Pillowman at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

You know, high art and culture are actually the most dangerous and subversive things in modern society. All of this art malarkey seems just as likely to inspire virtue, charity etc. in a person as it does hatred and violence.

A few months ago, a student at my University declared in print that World of Warcraft is notorious for turning players into social pariahs and slovenly wretches – but that's not the only negative effect has on its viewers. More frequently shoot-'em-up games that allow the player to inhabit a violent persona have been linked to an increase in violent crime (as has Hip-Hop, with its glorification of gang turf and guns, cf. In Loving Memory).

In The Pillowman, the idea is that the high artform of the short story is responsible for encouraging horrific crimes. That same student claimed that chess had resulted in more 20th-century deaths than any computer game – which goes to show that you shouldn't believe everything you read. Unfortunately, some people are more susceptible than others to the malign power of art and literature.

It's a malign power that disguises itself in a softer guise (ie. a man made of pillows); appearances are deeply deceptive in this totalitarian world. For a play so obsessed with story-telling (cf. Bad House), there is a surprisingly high number of untrustworthy narrators on display. It's not just the Police that are untrustworthy, but also the supposedly innocent and those that haven't done anything they think is wrong (let's be honest, not a one of them is really innocent).

Martin McDonagh's play might over-state art's prosecution case by making the victim of art's influence a mentally-handicapped person, but James Gamage's sensitive performance keeps this plausible. Undeniably, the dependence Gamage's character has on his brother invests an even heavier moral burden on Chris Cains' Katurian – the artist whose graphic and gruesome words instigate crime, and the brother who must protect and nurture his mentally-handicapped sibling. He is more responsible than most artists accused of inspiring crime, and his plight is so much more interesting for that.

McDonagh's richly dark comic play is a terrifying portrayal of a totalitarian state that refuses to afford rights to its citizens. Its citizens have a twisted set of morals – a world where it's okay for parents to torture their children for years without their other children noticing, and for that to be reflected in the short stories written by the survivors.

Tell Tale at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

Children play. They like to play. The inner child. The nine-year old expressed in a poetic limbo space before our eyes. In our minds.

Child's play is at the heart of Hull Uni's Tell Tale – the stage is filled with innocent naifs, who have just discovered the space they're in. At the same time as us. Or has the space discovered them? Either way, Sarah Davies' cast then give guided tours for some of the audience – those that brave the parachute game – around the space they themselves have only just discovered.
Each of these children have tales to tell – spot the title. Why: no one knows. Where: no one knows. But they're too adult, too knowledgeable, too worldy-wise, to be children.

They tell stories about animals. About butterflies and kangaroos, about hedgehogs and tortoises, about leopards and moths. They let dingoes loose in the daring dark, and their women wash in the wettest waters of the Wollgongilong River. Their butterflies perch on the fingers of kings. For no readily-apparent reason, they serve squash and biscuits. Don't ask why; your inner child doesn't. It's a children's party for all of the children in the theatre – bring your inner child if you want an invitation.

These children wander and wonder. The audience wonder. They have a chance to wander. Questions are asked: answers remain hidden somewhere off-stage – in some metaphysical, existential game of hide-and-seek. The children never dwell on a question; five more queue in the wings. Neither should you. Let your wonder wander.

It's about saying 'yes' to new questions and ideas. Giving free reign to that inner child.

Phaedra's Love at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

The state of British society is appalling. There are arrogant, ignorant chavs at the bottom and repulsive, depraved aristocrats at the top – and we'll all be better off without them.

This is a problem exposed in Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love, where it is picked at like an angry scab. At the heart is the spoilt brat of a prince, Hippolytus. You may have seen messier living rooms in student houses (I have), but you've probably not met someone quite so unpleasantly repellent as this slob. Yet women – and men – still want him! What is there attractive about him? Sure, he's not physically unattractive, but it's hard to see anything likeable. Rupert Lazarus gives the arrogant sneer and charisma needed for such a wastrel with an assured charm – damn him. His Hippolytus is almost a sympathetic character, and it's that which makes the play hang together.

What of that play? Phaedra's Love is based on a Greek Tragedy which takes Hippolytus as its main character, but in Kane's hands it becomes a brutal attack firstly on medical science and then on religion. The shrinks are as flawed as their patients, incapable of giving any help beyond saying that Hippolytus needs to lose weight. Not helpful in the slightest. And as for religion! Kane's Hippolytus is a violently, self-righteously Atheist in a world that seems utterly devoid of any divinity. The Catholic Church – seen in Jamie Askill's Priest – is yet another institution that lets down those most in need of it. Kane shows both medical science and religion to be a disgrace and a let-down.

Racheal Shaw's giggly Phaedra burns on a pyre along with any shred of decency in the world, and the firestorm caused is only the beginning of the end. While Edmund Jones' Theseus tears himself apart in grief, the world goes to Hell and will never come back.

But that gang of chavs at the doors when the audience enters prove that the world is already in a dire state. These floatsam place themselves inside the audience before they pour their filthy presences onto the stage and form the mob at the climax. Their rage at so public a criminal is palpable and has been in some form for much of the play. While the mob is undeniably necessary, it might not need to be chavs – nor do they need to come amongst the audience. They personify the play's rage with unnerving power in the final moments, so much so that I was willing them to their unspeakable acts of violence. So well done to them, the horrible little scumbags.

Doesn't it just make you mad?

Our Country's Good at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

What's the best way to deal with a person who steals a loaf of bread to feed their family?

If you gave 'hanging' as an answer, you'd be right. Well, according to the legal system established within the British colony of New South Wales in Timberlake Wertenberger's Our Country's Good. It may seem a harsh penalty, but we're dealing with a colony of the British Empire peopled largely by convicts and their soldier guards, and the man enforcing the laws is a General.

He's torn between setting a harsh example in defence of the British laws made in a faraway and his sympathy for the human suffering he sees in the people he governs. In fact, it's deeper than that; many of the play's debates aren't simply about capital punishment. They're about a much bigger debate that relates not only the British colonists/convicts, but also to the native peoples whose voice has no expression in the text though they are physically present in this production's many interludes. The debate Wertenbaker returns to again and again is that between cultivating and civilising (thus bettering) mankind or accepting that mankind will fail, make mistakes and never be corrected. It's a debate still relevant today, when stories about Jon Venables crop up: should we be rehabilitating law-breakers or punishing them? Is it worth elevating such people (criminals, colonised peoples) knowing that their nature is not suited to the ideal of mainstream Europe, and their fall from it is almost inevitable?

Naturally, there's no easy answer to those questions. Nor is there one that applies to all (not even most) cases, and Wertenbaker never pretends such an answer exists. Her play is rather more certain about the means of elevating the criminals or colonised peoples: art. Specifically drama, unsurprising in a dramatist, and particularly relevant to those of us here at NSDF intending to learn about drama. So there are links between the cast of the play-within-a-play of OCG and the audience of OCG; we are people expected to learn, mature and grow as individuals through the practice and application of drama as an artform and agent of culture.

Wertenbaker's ending leaves her audience guessing. We've no idea how the play-within-a-play is received, after its painful and shaky rehearsals. In a way, it leaves the metaphorical ball very much in our court – we're the ones that must take the learning from drama and culture then run with it into the future, in a way that we don't get to see the fictional cast doing. It's our move.

Guidelines for Measures to Cope at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

What happens when science meets performance – as with any clash of titans – is that one or both of them must sacrifice something to the other. After the tender and beautiful opening minute of Guidelines for Measures to Cope, it becomes clear that science has gained the upper hand.

In a massive information overload, a textbook definition of Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) is given via voiceover – no doubt interesting and informative in itself, especially considering the disorder's low profile in the UK. What BDD boils down to – and do take note, as this is is what Guidelines... is all about – is a disorder that makes (mainly young) people think their bodies look different to the way they actually are – too fat, too small, wrong colour, say. Think of all the time you spend in getting ready to go out and checking your appearance in shop or car windows – imagine having to do that all the time because had no choice. BDD can be like that, without the fun, forever. There are more sufferers than you might think, and it's a very private, introvert disorder that rarely gets reported.

If anyone missed the details of the definition (they probably did), then the cast helpfully chalk notes up on the wall as they go. Like lecture notes, these might mean something in the immediate aftermath of being written, but won't do so later. Every now and then they mark up individual rules HDD sufferers have adopted in order to cope – this is the individual, human story behind the condition if ever you want one. But in some cases, a straightforward narrative isn't strictly necessary (maybe definitive plotlines are over-rated?) and it's interesting that other shows this year also have plots that refuse to be categorical yet this is considered part of their charm.

Avoiding emphasis on a single character, the cast spend the rest of the show enacting and dramatising – in verbatim form – the condition itself. Their stories and monologues of confession are real people's words and between them build a portrait of BDD, not of individual sufferers. But the piece is intended as an educational device, and as such its concern is to teach and educate, to raise our awareness of BDD in the world. In pursuit of that end, it can sometimes be helpful to think in terms of individual faces and stories (an anonymous mass of Holocaust victims tends to arouse far less sympathy than individual Anne Frank – bigger scale, but you get my point) – but Electric Shadows don't worry too much about that.

Instead they layer up experiences of BDD in a non-linear fashion, to demonstrate and dramatise that definition they had at the start. They don't dramatise a character, which could become implausible and suffer inhuman levels of stress, but dramatise instead the condition – as such, the piece speaks to each of us about an experience broader than ourselves.

Bad House at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

In somewhere fairly unpleasant not too far from here, there's a disreputable bar called the Bawd House (or maybe the Bad House). It's a place where the stained walls are soaked in grim stories to set the teeth on edge and turn the stomach.

Of course you're more than welcome to visit this Bawd House – assuming it's still standing – and partake of its dubious delights...good ale (apparently), spit in the tankards and a leery, one-eyed Landlord who regales his assembled customers with provincial fairy tales.

Tom Gill is that Landlord, and he relishes his role, the vowels and gruesome details rolling round his mouth and out into open, echoey space before him. Beside him, alternately leering and lowering outwards, are his regular chorus of customers – somehow, they're also his audience, yet are more informed than us about the dark history of this place.

And what a history. Ravenous, glutting crows devastating farmland until supernatural forces intervene; a wealthy orphan pursued by (and pursuing) lusty young suitors-turned-grave-robbers beyond death, and finally a series of unexplained child vanishings culminating in a tense chase through churchyards. The Bawd House's pivotal role in this history underlines its distinctly unsavoury character, being the point at which the Landlord's trio of tales come full circle.

The last is probably the strongest, especially as the cast's storytelling enters a whole new dimension. Strong as Tom Gill's monologue performance is, the story-telling premise really takes off when the other cast members are allowed a voice too and the pace rattles along twice as fast. Their new tight focus on a solitary spot, coupled with the refreshing movement around it, gives a whole new level of tension to Bad House.

But ultimately, though it may scare, Bad House is about telling stories. They are tales that inspire fear and then purge it with the relief and reassurance that are – at the end of the day – just stories.

Angel at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

I don't use the term 'mind-fuck' lightly. Certainly not this time, anyway, considering that DeMontford University's Angel won't necessarily leave you reeling.

The five performers give an ostentatious triumph for the theatre approach that doesn't rely upon (or even need) a narrative. You remember the folk (well, Anthony Mamos) who wrote in Monday's NOFF that: 'I don't like stories'.

So now we can behold the results of the artistic policy that is so opposed to narrative. And how oppositional it is. Watch as Angel takes apart many of the rules associated with theatre. Their space, divided vertically by string and horizontally by tape, is a crazy paving web of controlled anarchy – populated by figures that I'd like to relate to board games and games of chance. I'd like to, but I'm not convinced.

What we get presented with appears to be a 3D exploration of the effect of music on individuals. A certain operatic aria creates a frenetic lucidity prompting the declaration from the angel-man that he keeps going around in circles. Work-out music gets him onto the exercise bike, other styles get him and his companions typing or applauding. It's not strictly about a specific man; it seems to be more a means of conveying the relationship between human behaviour and music. Alas, this is something that needs experiencing (hearing and seeing) to be full grasped.

At the centre is Mamos himself – the man who dresses as an angel. And why not? Why shouldn't a man be free to dress and express himself as he likes? Within reason, of course – but if he's not hurting anyone else, then he can do as he likes. And frankly, his outfit is almost as entertaining as it is disturbing. Though it's the muscular tics that cause the disturbing effect.

The non-linear approach of Angel is brought brazenly to the fore when, after hopelessly flicking through a gigantic book, a character announces that 'it's no story, this, here' and kills the lights. So any attempt to impose meaning on this eclectic piece via plotline is confounded (no doubt to the delight of Mamos' anti-plot school of thought). The irony is that the phrase is placed at the closing of the piece, and so is bound to be seen as a conclusion or definitive statement by those trying to impose a story structure.

4 Bar and Rising at NSDF10 (from Noises Off)

The poor common man at the centre of 4 Bar and Rising is under a lot of pressure: mounting paperwork and networks of dependency have reduced him to a human pinball. The boiler in my house rarely gets up to one bar, and that heats the house fine – these days it's too much. So I dread to think what four bars must be like. This man's plight, as he is pinged around the stage while trying to shrug off the burdens of his world, is one that taps into the essence of modern life. It speaks to each of us living in a society with dress codes and a reliance on exam results as a means of determining worth.

4 Bar... speaks most strongly against the society it finds itself in when Adrian Spring finds himself forced to bear with him a wad of important papers, which between them determine and rigidly classify his life. His birth certificate, exam results, CV, marriage and divorce certificates and all that tiresome bureaucracy that has turned him into the dazed, confused and pressured individual he is. They are all things expressing an obligation on his part (even that of registering his birth) – yet not one demonstrates any benefit he gains, like a wage or food. Most explicitly, a final – unidentified – piece of paper is dangled in front of him and placed just out of his reach. As he strains against the elasticated rope holding him back, struggling to keep hold of the other papers (ie. his entire life, in this society's value-structure), desperate to reach the piece of paper (clearly representing the wages/benefits for the generic proletariat) denied to him, the tension builds and the anti-capitalist allegory becomes very clear. Then the tension snaps – and of course the working man had been denied his rights.

His final act is a liberation not only of mind and body but of the individual from the strictures of a capitalist society that categorises and codifies its citizens amid swathes of bureaucracy.
Alternatively, it may be about something entirely different. To be honest, I really wanted 4 Bar and Rising to be about weather reports. I hoped for some Met Office experts to be pointing to colourful maps of the UK as isobars swept across the Pennines and deposited buckets of rain over Scarborough. Ideally, there would be four isobars, although I don't think that means very much pressure – I'm not a weather forecaster.

There was a man who struggles to cross roads because he worries that some other people will throw sheets of paper at him. They might also tie an elastic rope to him and ping him about like a human pinball. It becomes a live essay on the dangers of bullying. But don't worry; there's a nice ending. Our dazed, confused and abused young man remembers a Christmas or birthday, when his dad gave him a skateboard (represented here by a long metal bar). It's a touching tribute to the power of interpersonal relationships, especially within families.

Actually, neither of those really works and everything I've thought about 4 Bar... has been at best incomplete and at worst flawed. It's the sort of piece that ought to be played about with in an audience's collective imagination for long after the applause dies down. There are a myriad ways of looking at it.

Each member of the cast has a clear idea of what their piece means, and appear to want each audience member to feel that too: an individual interpretation that doesn't depend on any prescribed meaning from elsewhere. So, for those of you that had a meaning worked out – however incomplete – that's great, don't worry about it matching up with any other view, least of all that held by the cast. For the rest of us, 4 Bar... raises questions about how important it is that we pin down the exact meaning of a performance.

In the end, almost any interpretation is equally as valid as another: so said cast member Sam Powell in yesterday's discussion.

National Student Drama Festival 2010

So I've spent the last week or so in Scarborough working on the editorial team of the National Student Drama Festival's magazine, Noises Off.

The magazine is an open-access affair that caters for almost any writerly whim that chances across Fest-goers' minds - though it's mainly used for reviewing the twelve shows selected from across the country and presented in Scarborough. Thrown in there as well tends to be some comment and debate about the Festival, theatre, drama and anything else that happens to get brought up, as well as jokes, poems cartoons etc etc. All good stuff.

There were twelve shows, but this year I didn't review them all; I like to think it was because I was busy being all editorial and helping other people write things and keeping an eye on what was going in to NOFF content-wise. But it's possible I just spent a lot longer than usual thinking about stuff, so missed copy deadline.

Anyway, the next few posts are the reviews I did write. There's no Overview piece this year, I just didn't have time, and anyway Robert Hewison writes one in The Sunday Times which ought to give a good view of the Festival as a whole. That's out on April 11th.

When performers respond to reviews - RashDash and 'Never Enough'

It's always interesting when someone you've reviewed talks to you about said review. Partly, it's the knowledge that, actually, the stuff we people write does get read...that's reassuring. But partly, it's the knowledge that someone has read what you've said and thought about it – probably because it applies so much to them.

Now, I've been in trouble over reviews in the past (when a company objected to their work being referred to as 'physical theatre'), but today I found it seems to have happened on a bigger scale than before. What makes this amusing – rather like the last time this happened – is that the company in question seems to have misunderstood the review in question. In fairness, that makes it sound like I've not been clear enough, but performers don't usually have problems with 'getting' what I say.

One of the companies performing at this year's NSDF claim that I wrote their worst review...which surprised me because I thought mine was pretty positive. In fact, I really enjoyed their show, rather like I enjoyed the show they'd entered the year before. The fact that RashDash Theatre Company is from my own University is irrelevant. Still, if my review was the worst thing written about them, they must have done pretty well on the whole – and let's not overlook their joint award for most popular show at the Festival.

But it's interesting that the company of Never Enough should take such objection to what I wrote.
My first comment about the company itself is:

'what is worth noting – and commending – is the fact that RashDash have been
selected for NSDF in a second consecutive year.'

I draw special attention to the word 'commending'.

RashDash might then have taken issue with my point that their energetic show borrows from different dance styles. Possibly. But at no point have I said that it's a bad thing, as I think it's quite a good thing.

Then, a few lines later:

'This is a company that has invested time and effort in perfecting their
physical technique; they gel together beautifully, moving fluidly and easily
around each other'.

I'm struggling to see how this is their worst review, when some people really didn't like Never Enough.

Apparently, they don't like the idea that I've claimed their acting wasn't very good. This response to the review surprised me, as I was pretty sure I hadn't said it; there's not much to fault in their acting. So, I re-read said review.

'as is so often the case, these dancers aren't so hot on acting. None of the
trio can quite hold their own when delivering monologues [...] It's not that
Graham's description of his dream house isn't interesting, it just pales away
when compared with the drive and passion of his dance work.'

By which I mean that their dance work is better than their acting. That doesn't mean their acting is bad. It's just not their strongest point.

'it's a testament to the strength of the ensemble that no individual is able to
stand out.'

is also no bad thing.

But thinking about it, I gather the cast aren't keen on being referred to as 'dancers', for some reason. I don't know why, as all three excel in that field, and much of their work has a distinctly 'dancey' feel to it. Maybe they objected to my comparing their show – loosely – to the BBC's Mistresses in the way it balanced several stories at once. Once again, that's no bad thing; it's what I love about Mistresses.

Still, Never Enough is being performed again at the University of Hull tonight and tomorrow – so I'm told. Hopefully, when I turn up, they won't throw me the seemingly angry looks they threw me at NSDF. Personally, I look forward to seeing how they've changed the show in the month or so since NSDF.

University of East Anglia's Tub at NSDF09 (from Noises Off)

Warning: this play contains scenes of mild bathing.

In the University of East Anglia’s production of Tub, Olivia Vinall has her hair washed several times by an inquiring young man whose clothing seems a little damaged. He’s missing most of a sleeve and the leg of his trousers, and also has a rip below his arm. Her costume has been similarly mutilated, as perhaps has her mind…or at least her memory.

What is so beautiful about Tub is that it allows an audience to make their own stories, use their imagination and work out for themselves what they think is going on. Different audience members probably have different ideas of what on earth they think happens, and that’s no bad thing. Theatre encouraging and feeding the imagination of those watching is theatre that has succeeded. That’s not to say theatre companies should be allowed the excuse that their audience draws its own meaning from performance, and so performers needn’t bother putting in the work themselves. That isn’t success: it’s laziness.

The Smoke and Mirrors theatre company responsible for Tub certainly aren’t lazy; Tub has a story to it, and a style of its own, if you just make the effort to follow it. Their audience has to be willing to make the connections that are offered up by Vinall and co-star Matthew Hassell, otherwise this play would be incomprehensible. At just twenty minutes long, Tub is concentrated and fluid. It has a potent little mix of short scenes that flow from one to another easily and smoothly. Dialogue is terse and to the point. Tub exists within a world outside of any other, drawing on its own internal reference points and stylistic features. The water-soaked umbrella is an especial visual highlight of their simplistic style.

In the repeated hair-washing and the scenes that follow, Vinall’s nameless character can be seen trying to piece her life back together, delving deep for memories of a special event; a date with Hassell’s character. We aren’t told why she can’t remember exactly what happened, or why she puts this particular day back into her mind. But that’s what’s so good about Tub; we’re given the chance to think something up for ourselves.

Vowel Play at NSDF09 (from Noises Off)

This was one of my favourites of this year's Festival, for various reasons. Apart from anything else, it gave us 'word geeks' a chance to show off and be a bit playful - some writing reviews using only univowels (chat, back, look, floor, that sort of thing), or not using the letter 'e' (quite a feat, Shutters). I chose to include the letter 'u' in every sentence, as it never occurs in Vowel Play.


It's a funny thing about words. We use them to communicate with each other – that's what they're for – and yet there are those of us that won't say certain words. That could mean deliberately avoiding swearing, or it could just be that some words don't sit easily in some mouths. How often do you hear chavs use words like 'presently', 'exponential' or 'gosh'? When did you last hear someone say 'cheery' or 'frenetic' out loud?

Dartington's Vowel Play takes this idea to a whole new level; each character is allowed to use only one vowel. From the off, it's a fascinating exploration of speech and writing technique. Not only is each of the four women on stage given a different style of talking (necessary because of the kind of words that they have available), but it's also a tough call for a writer to pull off half an hour of speech with such a specific rule.

A case in point is Carey Mackenzie's Hannah – using the vowel 'e' – who can't talk about herself as 'I' (because Jaz Woodcock-Stewart's Jess has that vowel), instead talks about other people, mainly her Greek lover, Elle [it's pronounced Ellie, but that can't be right, because Ellie's got an 'i' in it]. However, she sounds like a bad tape recording where some of the words have been missed out, because none of her verbs can have 'I' in front of them.

What happens with the removal of four vowels from a person's speech is that – immediately – they have to start thinking of new ways of saying things. It might sound like it's a terribly restrictive thing, loosing so many letters, but in fact what it actually does is force these four women into new means of expression. They often can't use what seems the most obvious way of saying something, because of a stray vowel that belongs to one of the others. You can see it most clearly when they're setting levels on the microphones. After Hannah has said 'Test', Billie Beckley's Kim has to find a word using 'a' instead of 'e'.

Another thing that becomes apparent very quickly is that these women can't communicate with each other in normal conversation. The rule they exist under makes vast swathes of the English language out of bounds to them – perhaps most significantly, the words 'communicate' and 'conversation' can't be pronounced, because they have more than one vowel. While this urgency for new expressions is the script's strength, it is also its weakness. These women can't use words like 'hope', 'friend', 'chance', 'phone', 'advice' and 'chocolate'. I don't think I'd want to live in a world without those things.

But is it ultimately – as Jess fears – a bit 'gimmicky'? While it may sound like a purely literary exercise for people who like words, Vowel Play also has its warm human heart in the four women who perch behind the microphones. This is a mode of writing that really doesn't work for dialogue, but gives great opportunities for monologues. There are several here, and it's difficult to fault any of them. They flit between touchingly sad and brazenly funny – with healthy doses of sex along the way.

So it's maybe a little bit gimmicky, but it handles its gimmick well, forcing language to change and adapt to each character every time their mouth is opened. That's what makes it interesting, and that's why it is a strong half hour of drama.

National Student Drama Festival 2009

My third NSDF, and possibly my favourite so far. That's partly because I was lucky enough to be awarded the Harold Hobson Student Drama Critic Award (mentioning it sounds almost unbearably arrogant, sorry).

The blog hasn't been updated lately because being in Scarborough for the Festival takes so much time (excuses). But here's an overview of NSDF09 that appeared (more or less like this) in the Festival's magazine, Noises Off:

It may be the conspicuous level of cuddly toys littering the NOFFice, or it may be the fact that Edinburgh University's The Last Yak is still on my mind, but the thought has suddenly seized me that this year's shows can be divided roughly equally into two camps: those that featured animals in some sense and those that avoided animal references almost entirely. The reasons behind favouring or avoiding animal references may have varied, but this still serves as a useful division of the shows gracing NSDF09.

As I type this, a monkey is eyeing me mockingly from the table. He's hardly one to mock, having bright blue fur, an orange face, lime green arms and red feet and ears. Freak. He's been left by the No Wonder company from Manchester, who've generously left all their cuddly toys in the NOFFice up for adoption as mascots. Mine is the smallest, ugliest one I could find. He's a bit of an outsider, being so freakish, but he still manages to maintain that cheeky grin plastered across his hideous, orange face. Which makes him a bit like Edward Franklin's character in No Wonder – the one that emerges from the wardrobe full of toy animals. Alright, so Franklin doesn't have a face that is hideous or orange, but his character is a bullied outsider, picked on because he's weedy and his dad's a bit weird. It's a play about the delusions people practice on each other and themselves – whether that's dressing up as Peter Pan or pretending that your husband will wake up from a coma. As in several other of this year's shows, there is an undercurrent of pain and violence in No Wonder; Franklin's young Luke self-harms when he can't cope with the outside world.

He's not the only one that struggles with the outside world this year; Manchester University's other entry – Herons – centres on characters struggling to escape external factors bearing down on their lives which make the eventual climax inevitable. Interestingly, Franklin crops up in this one as well, this time as a nasty thug who punishes insults with the repeated application of a glass bottle. Nice man. What Scott (Franklin) is defending with such brutality is his honour – this and a sparse set give Herons a feel of timelessness; it could almost be about any generation let down by its elders and disapproving of the upcoming generation. Simon Stephens' long, tense play wins the award for this year's most conspicuous use of animals in a title (100% animal!), though the herons are mentioned pretty infrequently in the script itself.

The absence of any actual herons in Herons is echoed in Warwick University's Elephant's Graveyard – another title to feature heavy use of an animal – but here the elephant is mentioned much more often. The thing with this elephant – Mary – is that she's actually pretty unimportant, so it's alright for her to become invisible. What matters in Elephant's Graveyard is the reaction of the ordinary people to the death of a stranger, who is also invisible. Were either of these figures to be seen, they would undoubtedly prove distracting to the overall message of this piece, which warns of the blood lust lurking in us all. Though Mary is in the title, she's not the thing to be watching for; there is a strong ensemble cast well worth watching instead of trying to imagine the elephant they're hanging badly.

The other Mary of the Festival this year is in a play bereft of animal references: the University of East Anglia's The Wake. Initially it looks as thought this is another Mary that will have to remain in our imaginations, until she pops up in the audience and turns Jonathan Brittain's shaky one-man show into a fast-paced two-hander. Like many of the shows featuring this year, it has characters onstage before the House opens though on this occasion he is invisibly lodged inside a coffin.

East Anglia's other entry – Olivia Vinall's Tub – is another show this year to have performers in place before the audience enters, and again the performer in question is invisible – this time inside the eponymous bathtub. Tub is a twenty-minute gem of a play, that leaves its audience free to make their own stories and background to a world apparently lacking in anchors.

The removal of anchors and stable points of reference are fundamental to Warwick Uni's other entry: Return to the Silence. This production – devoid of animals, if you ignore the golden retriever reference – literally disconnects its audience from normal conventions and swings them about the space in order to give some kind of impression of how delicate a thing mental health is.

Edinburgh University's production of Anthony Neilson's Normal is another show to feature a fractured and unhinged world, but this time it's liberal moral assumptions being called into question. The mental well-being of Peter Kurten (Paddy Loughman) is certainly under examination, but so is the society that produced him – much as is implicitly happening in Herons. Something Herons doesn't have is bestiality, which Kurten relishes. To continue the theme of prominent birds, Normal has a huge swan at the back of the stage, which has perhaps led to audiences making too much of the Nazi overtones in this production. What is important to Kurten is his explosive sexual desires, along with his physical appearance.

The three characters featured in the University of Hull's Never Enough also have hidden desires that bubble dangerously to the surface when they are thrown together. These desires are largely sexual – as with Kurten in Normal – but also touch on materialism, physical appearance and food. Never Enough explores all three of its characters with roughly equal stage time and a fair amount of constructive borrowing from different dance styles.

In another example of beautifully-held balance between different characters, Dartington's Vowel Play depicts four women telling stories about their lives through microphones, possibly as background dialogue for a radio play. The quirk in Joe Richards' script is that each character may use only one vowel. The joy of Joe Richards' script is the ways in which language is forced to adapt and change to accommodate new circumstances, highlighting the immense versatility (and often musicality)of the English language.

Language also forms an important feature of Giggleswick School's Sad Since Tuesday, which features angels speaking in rhyming couplets and several characters of foreign extraction with requisite accents. The chicken wings of the angels, and the chicken huts on stage (one for the band, one for Tom Coxon's angel) help shunt this into the 'Using Animal References' category that I'm using to distinguish shows this year. While showcasing huge creative potential, this show also demonstrates how important a guiding hand can be in the rehearsal process; Sad Since Tuesday wants its rough edges smoothing over. Among the strongest aspects of this production is design, which has an aesthetic pleasantry that slides it neatly alongside the film version of A Matter of Life and Death.

Another piece paying great attention to design is the final piece of the pro-animal category (and is another to feature animal references in its title): Edinburgh University's second entry, The Last Yak. Clever puppetry is combined with a confident style to pull off a pleasing animal fable. This has the most frequent use of animals out of every piece this year; almost all of the characters are jungle-dwelling beasts.

Finally, a play that doesn't strictly belong with the pro-animal group, but has an honorary mention because its set includes a dog made solely from Coca-cola cans. Blackpool College's Me and My Friend has a set littered with these cans, but sadly devoid of actual animals references. Oh well. However, as if to compensate for the lack of animals, Me and My Friend picks up the earlier theme of mental instability established by Warwick and Edinburgh Universities.
The two characters here are out in the scary real world after their release from a psychiatric institute filled with fellow nutters.

So they're a bit like the students graduating from featured Universities/schools/colleges, really. Going out into the wider world of theatre, using their experiences in the madhouse of NSDF to further their careers and lives. Good luck to them all.