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

Others @ The Junction, Cambridge

Jemma invites you to be part of her project over the next six months. She's interested in you because, basically, you're not like her. She's looking for someone other than her, someone different to her, someone 'other'. Don't ask how she knows you're different; she just assumes you are. Thus begins Others, presented by The Paper Birds at The Junction, Cambridge.

Although, it's not actually you she's asking: that's just a letter Jemma (one of The Paper Birds) has written to other women asking them to share stories for Others. The three women featured are an Iranian artist, a prisoner in a British jail and a celebrity (Heather Mills, who seems not to have replied to her letter). That's one for each of the three women who form The Paper Birds and present their work at The Junction in a simple style, speaking directly to their audience, voices sometimes overlapping, contradicting or supporting each other. Meanwhile, music is occasionally provided by a meek male figure who hangs forlornly about the edge of the stage, speaking only to tell us his name (Jonathan).

There's a certain forced attempt at audience interaction as The Paper Birds wait for their front of house clearance. Others becomes a long interruption of their conversation with the audience, the show is what happens while they try and do other things, seemingly distracted by offstage sounds. The Paper Birds tease at the fourth wall in the opening of their show, but never actually do anything with it (not until a suddenly startling moment later on, when their Iranian correspondent blames the West for her troubles, which is all the more powerful for being so sudden).

The Paper Birds' dramatisation of the Iranian artist's story punctures our Western generalisations about Iran and the Middle East. It makes our Western perceptions seem ludicrous and questions our ability to ever really understand the 'other', not just in this case but in all cases. That's the heart of Others: perception and understanding of people who are different, people who are 'other'. The difficulty in understanding is also conveyed far more subtly by undermining Western generalisations than by having Shani Erez (another of The Paper Birds) repeatedly insist that English speakers don't understand people from the Middle East.

The project to find 'others' also leads to a northern UK prison and a woman serving a life sentence for manslaughter. Despite repeated claims of 'It's not about us [The Paper Birds]', this woman's life is seen through the curiosity (read: barely-disguised voyeurism) of those same Paper Birds. Again, the character is purely 'other' and the focus of narrative slant is on the audience/narrators' perception of that 'other'.

Nowhere is this more clear than with the case of the third 'other': Heather Mills. Her entire life appears to have become a media circus, with everyone's perception of her filtered through a hostile press. In Others, she isn't even allowed to answer questions herself (possibly because she hasn't given The Paper Birds any answers). Instead The Paper Birds answer questions for her, increasingly diverging from the facts about Mills' life and into personal speculation. Such is our treatment of celebrities (and often non-celebrities).

Mills and The Paper Birds seem to be part of a group of women (ie. all women) who've suffered at the hands of men. In fact, men come out of Others pretty badly. At best, they heartlessly break up with devoted and devastated women, leaving emotional wreaks behind. At worst, they're serial abusers who father multiple children without a second thought. Could this be the real 'other'? Violent masculinity that that somehow ensnares devoted affection?

Maybe that's what The Paper Birds are somehow really trying to understand, as much as the 'other' women they claim to seek. Or maybe I think that because, as a man, all of these women are my 'other'; that's the kind of thinking sparked off by Others. The Paper Birds do genuinely question perceptions of the 'other' and handle their material in a thought-provoking manner. But it might be interesting to see who Jonathan would find as his 'other'.

Thanks to The Junction, Cambridge's website and jeckman for the images.

Single Father [Episode Four] on BBC One

When the BBC continuity announcer described an emotional climax for David Tennant's single father, she wasn't lying.

Not to say that the previous three episodes of the BBC's Single Father had been less than emotional, but this final one rather went for it. Fair enough, if you've got David Tennant onboard, you'd want to use him, right? Helped on by various chemical imbalances, pregnancies, alcohol and that interfering sister Anna (Neve McIntosh), the series rolled on to its relatively cheerful ending last night.

The competition between Matt (Warren Brown) and Dave (David Tennant) may have fizzled out disappointingly, but the competition between Dave and Stuart (Rupert Graves) is racked up a few notches for this concluding episode. As relationships go, that's probably where Single Father suddenly really hits the mark; a fiercely polite tug-of-love between two fathers. It just needs them to be the same age to have an extra kick; is Graves too grey-haired to have been at college with Rita (the underused Laura Fraser)?

On the relationship front, the final episode ties up one of the niggling worries in my mind over Single Father. There's a small moment in which we can finally get some idea about why on earth Mark Heap's Robin married Anna – look at that cheeky little grin, that puckering up that serves as both apology and forgiveness. Heap may have only had brief moments through Single Father, but they've often been the best bits; finely observed and neatly judged, Heap is highly watchable and a tad underused.

It's just a shame that, as ever, Single Father seems to have neglected plausible storyline in favour of hitting its audience where it hurts. If Heap and Fraser are underused, Dave's eldest daughter, Tanya (Sophie Kennedy Clark), is probably overused in this episode – especially in the almost entirely unnecessary (and fairly implausible) event with Brown's Matt. Sure, it leads her into a violent outburst that lets the proverbial cat out of the bag in a loud manner, which needed to happen. But there are no doubt easier (read: more plausible) ways of doing so, without resorting to plot devices that smack of Jacobean tragedy. That incident aside, Brown is finally allowed to shine in this final episode, which is good, and gives a glimpse of what he can do given chance.

So those Single Father plot threads are fairly neatly wound up (don't ask what Matt decides to do with himself after not finding and confronting Dave). Lucy's happily chosen a father (for now) while even Dave and Anna are managing to get along. Which just leaves us with the main plot – you know, Sarah (Suranne Jones) and Dave? Alas, that's where it falls apart a bit. Never mind the chunk of plot missing during which Dave decided to go ahead with the paternity test she suggested last week – what's going on with the bump she has herself? Are we expected to believe that she was as manipulative as Rita in not telling Dave that she was going to get herself pregnant (and that he fell for it again!), decided to leave Dave afterwards, and then was persuaded to change her mind once again simply because Dave looked imploring and told her he reckoned it could work? Forgive me for sounding incredulous. I mean, sure, women look for good father material in their partners, but two consecutive women wanting Dave's children despite needing persuading that a relationship with him is a good idea? No wonder he's ended up as a single father.

To be honest, if you're watching Single Father for support in a similar situation, you're probably better checking out the links on the show's page on the BBC website.

Image curtesy of the BBC.

This episode of Single Father may still be available to view via BBC iPlayer here.