My Excellent Adventures

On Thursday June 5th, I made my way to the South Bank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall for the fifth annual conference of the Clore Leadership Programme and Chris Smith’s last as Director before he moves on to become Chair of The Environment Agency.

Apart from the announcement of the new group of Fellows, the day’s theme was the issue of “excellence,” which has become something of a live issue since Sir Brian McMaster’s report for the DCMS was published in January this year. Previously, McMaster had been asked by the then Culture Minister, James Purnell, to explore the following themes: 

• How the system of public sector support for the arts can encourage excellence, risk-taking and innovation
• How artistic excellence can encourage wider and deeper engagement with the arts by audiences
• How to establish a light touch and non-bureaucratic method to judge the quality of the arts in the future

At the conference, McMaster spoke first about his work and talked about a successful process of peer review he had engaged in with six high-profile companies in the Netherlands. The companies were a diverse group of performing arts companies - ballet, dance, opera - that had apparently worked to an agreed matrix of evaluation. According to McMaster, the process had been constructive and a useful learning experience for all involved, but, in his opinion, the “best” company had emerged with the “best” evaluation. As it happens, we were given little insight into the specific reasoning behind this and somewhat like the report, McMaster was frustratingly vague on the practical application of his work, revealing little about the nuts and bolts of the process. However, McMaster did say this had been deliberate in the report and felt that it should be left to others to work out how the thinking can be applied.

Certainly, there were not many answers from Andy Burnham, the new Culture Secretary, who spoke afterwards in a well-intended, but, I felt, disappointingly insubstantial speech. Somewhat typical of Gordon Brown’s government, there seemed to be an inability to articulate a forward-looking vision that could really capture the imagination. On the contrary, there was a slightly backfooted aspect to the speech that mainly revolved around a defence of New Labour’s past use of targets and an acceptance that a different strategy was now needed that called for more autonomy in decision-making. Good to hear that the penny has finally dropped, I suppose, but Burnham did not manage to move beyond that and seemed to beg the question of whether it was acceptable to reverse everything that has happened up until now, as long as it feels right. There was more to be discovered in the group breakout sessions. My session, beautifully faciltated by Erica Whyman in the noisy foyer of QEH, posed the question: “What should a peer review process look like?”

Sometimes, one of the challenges of being based in Wales is the need to be flexibly aware of what is happening in other contexts and apply that learning to one’s own. There is the occasional danger that the dominant discourse is all about cultural policy in England, or more specifically London, and that some of the nuances can pass one by. It was during this session, however, that I really began to understand why it is such an issue at present. It seems clear that people are so exercised by the excellence agenda because it is universally expected to establish the methodology by which funding decisions will be made in the future. Indeed, it feels to me that there has been a conflation of three issues - excellence, peer review and funding - that is simultaneously alarming and energising to those affected by it.

However, in my view, McMaster’s report stops short of directly linking peer review with funding outcomes. It merely reasserts the importance of funders being able to make strategic interventions with “failing” organisations, including the option of removing funding altogether. In other words, it allows for peer review and funding policy to be co-existent in an holistic, but not mutually dependent, scheme of things.

Some people are cynical about what is happening. From my own point of view, it doesn’t feel particularly helpful to link funding decisions and peer review directly. Peer review is a good way to look at performance and develop best practice, so it seems wrong to inhibit that process. Moreover, funding is increasingly influenced by factors outside the parameters of performance and delivery, such as changes in governmental priority and availability of resources; therefore, the process needs to be as robust as possible in order to be enduring. It will inevitably become a corrupt process if it becomes seen as a way to safeguard against cuts or, indeed, a way to impose them. Apparently, in the educational sector, where peer review is standard practice, it is viewed with suspicion as a process whereby fault is looked for until it is found.

That said, there are some who will always find the idea of excellence troubling, particularly those who see it as a means of re-establishing a false and unwelcome hierarchy in the arts and asserting elitism over the small-scale and the grassroots. While something to guard against and avoid, it does now feel like a tired, knee-jerk argument - a smokescreen that belies the fact that the artistic process is full of qualitative judgements made on a moment by moment basis and at the heart of every artistic endeavour. Moreover, it is long past the time that organisations can ignore the need to be efficient and fail to safeguard precious resources at whatever level they operate. In my experience, excellence prevails throughout the entire spectrum of arts activity and, in principle, a dialogue about quality is not necessarily something to be afraid of. The question is about how it is applied and who applies it.

While peer review is on nobody’s lips in Wales at the moment, it may become so in due course, following the speech by The Heritage Minister, Rhodri Glyn Thomas, to The Arts Council of Wales annual conference on Friday, June 13th. That aside for the moment, the current creation of “beacon companies” offers an interesting paralllel to the situation in England and, perhaps, a useful point of contrast. In effect, beacon companies amount to the Welsh version of the excellence agenda. Arising from The Wales Arts Review, the proposal was an attempt to resolve the problematic issue of the definition of a ”national” organisation. Somewhere in the idea was a thought that Wales could begin from a level playing field and that even small, underfunded organisations which could demonstrate excellence and best practice could be rewarded with additional funding.

Unfortunately, the implementation of the scheme by ACW has been riddled with difficulties and problems, whereby a jaded arts community appears to be having some of its suspicions about the process confirmed. The fear abounds that ACW already knows which organisations it wants to offer the additional funding to and the application process clearly worked in opposition to the aspirations of smaller companies. For example, an organisation could not bid for funding unless it was a revenue funded company and the amounts one could apply for grew in proportion to the level of revenue funding received. In other words, companies in receipt of £500K could apply for larger sums than companies in receipt of £50K, therefore, an inbuilt hierarchy existed and not a level playing field.

However, the important principle here is that beacon company status is offered as an incentive and a reward for excellence. It is not something that determines the level of core funding, as it will in England. It is an aspect of the kind of erratic, top-down policy making in Wales that peer review is not part of the current agenda and, in some respects, it is all the better for it, despite it being more about accident than foresight. De-linking peer review and funding outcomes, therefore, is something that, for once, arts policy-makers in England could have looked to Wales for. 

The rest of my afternoon on The South Bank was a more relaxed affair, however - less about policy, more about people - and we had the opportunity to spend time together in our different year groups catching up. This is always so useful and one of the best things about the Fellowship programme has been the incredible group of people that I have been privileged to get to know and continue to be a part of.

This was followed by a quick, disorientating spin around The Hayward Gallery exhibition called Psycho Buildings, which featured a boating lake on the roof of the gallery.

It also featured a characteristically haunting installation by Rachel Whiteread of a miniature night scene made from two hundred doll’s houses called Place 2008.  

Suitably psyched out, we returned for drinks, a spectacular view of some real buildings - The London Eye and The Houses of Parliament - and a heartfelt thank you to Chris Smith for his five years at the helm. As with every single one of the other one hundred plus participants on the Clore Programme, words cannot do justice to how he has changed our lives, but he did and he will be a hard act to follow. 

Review: Black Watch

This review was commissioned for publication in Barn magazine:

The National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Black Watch by playwright Gregory Burke recently came to Ebbw Vale, trailing rave reviews and breathless recommendations that it is one of the greatest shows you will ever see. It is certainly a definitive piece of theatre, despite the fact that it is now almost two years since it premiered at the Edinburgh festival.

Having already played in Scotland, Australia and New York, however, Ebbw Vale manages to get it before London and, for that, Welsh audiences have to thank a partnership between the promoters and the Welsh Assembly Government, who found the extra £40,000 required from the Deputy Minister for Regeneration’s budget.  

The Arts Council of Wales has also been proactive in bringing Black Watch to Wales in anticipation of the new national theatre, hoping to set an example of the impact it can make. In that regard, judgements about the performance perhaps ought to sit alongside considerations about the level of its engagement with local people and its implications for the new national theatre.

However, on an artistic level at least, it’s hard to argue against the almost universal acclaim. Growing from Burke’s own verbatim interviews with members of The Black Watch regiment, personal and collective experience unfurls itself impressionistically from the starting point of a writer (played by Michael Nardone) conducting his research.

He does so by meeting seven soldiers in a pub, freshly returned from their tour of duty in Iraq, with the full weight of its chaos and danger bearing down upon them. It is a difficult meeting, fraught with suspicion and hostility, but not without a ribald humour. However, as the play progresses, this device begins to feel delicately intercessional, helping defuse any hint of the vicarious as it begins to uncover the personal and the real.   

In Wales, it is perhaps hard for us to appreciate the emotional attachment to the military. But, for Scottish audiences, there would have been a visceral impact to the loss of a three hundred year old regiment at the same time as its soldiers, drawn mainly from dead-end working class communities in Perthshire, Fife and Angus, were dying in Iraq. Black Watch plays adroitly into this context and shows us the real human cost.

However, to talk about “the play” is only one, and, at that, perhaps the least impressive element of this performance where the physical and visual imagery provides many of the stand-out moments. Director John Tiffany and his collaborator Steven Hoggett have worked together for many years. The relationship precedes the creation of the NTS to their work at Paines Plough, the small-scale new writing company, where Vicky Featherstone was again its Artistic Director. So, in many ways, the impact of Black Watch should be seen as a culmination of their working methods, rather than setting a completely new paradigm.

For all that, there are some deeply arresting images. Memorably, we first encounter the soldiers in their desert combat fatigues, cutting their way through the red baize of a pool table from within, which only moments before had been the focus for their banter in a Glaswegian pub. The signing sequence that accompanies the soldiers’ response to receiving letters from home is heartrending. In another typically bold moment, the suicide bombing is depicted through a literal suspension of the action in time, as three dying soldiers dangle helplessly from wires.

But there is also rigorous precision in the small detail of the ensemble work when a contentious question from the writer is met with a collective setting back in the chair or a small, but simultaneous adjustment in position. Indeed, the ensemble work was of a high order throughout with the all-male cast of ten equally adept at moving from gritty naturalism to high-voltage physicality. In a bravura finale, the production draws on the spectacle and theatricality of the Edinburgh tattoo – also staged in traverse – and which is played out to the inevitably stirring accompaniment of pipes.

Simply designed by Laura Hopkins and strikingly lit by Colin Grenfell, Tiffany has marshalled an impressive production that is strongly supported by his two collaborators on music and movement, respectively, Davey Anderson and Steven Hogget. Ultimately, it is a powerful and distinctive assertion of Scottish theatre at the dawn of the twenty first century.

In truth, the Ebbw Vale Leisure Centre was not the ideal venue for this production with its unhelpful acoustics and red plastic seating. Nevertheless, the production was held to be a good match with the town’s own history of military sacrifice and continuing economic challenges.

However, questions remain about whether the local audience benefitted as much as it could have from the brief flaring of high culture within its midst. There did seem to be quite a few empty seats and I estimated that a good third of the audience were invited guests and interested members of the theatre community travelling from elsewhere.

Consequently, one has to ask, if a hugely praised, world-class piece of theatre comes to Wales and fails to reach its intended audience, what does that imply for the new national company?

As it happens, some of the board members of the new national theatre were in the audience on opening night and must have been looking on with some trepidation. Of course, by comparison with the NTS, the new national theatre will have to face a number of demanding challenges, not least the one caused by the funding disparity. But, more than anything, it will have to contend with a range of expectations caused by the erratic and inconsistent nature of theatre development in Wales.

If Black Watch was intended as some kind of challenge to Welsh theatre, then it is worth thinking about the contribution to its success by Steven Hoggett.

Steven is Artistic Director of the hugely successful Frantic Assembly, a company that was formed in Swansea in the early Nineties and left Wales after four years, because, as Steven once said to me, “it felt like we were banging our heads against a brick wall in order to get any support or funding.” 

It is not that high-quality theatre of real promise and distinction cannot be created here – there is both the talent and the competency to do so. But in order to blossom, it requires nurturing. It also requires patience, clear-headedness and consistent vision – values which are often in short supply.

Watching Black Watch

The National Theatre of Scotland’s acclaimed production of Black Watch came to Wales on Thursday night and played… Ebbw Vale’s leisure centre… trailing rave reviews and breathless recommendations that it is one of the greatest shows you will ever see. It’s a definitive piece of theatre and I completely agree that it’s something not to be missed.

However, without wanting to sound like a curmudgeon, I came away with some mixed feelings - not about the production itself, which was inspiring, but about the event and the circumstances of its presentation.

Contrary to one opinion, I didn’t think the production played well in the space, despite the herculean efforts the NTS had taken to make the unhelpful acoustics, red plastic chairs and breeze block walls more bearable. Happily, the warm welcome of the centre’s attendants, who seemed genuinely pleased to be greeting people to their venue, just about managed to offset the bleak, Soviet-style queuing on entry and the lack of any bar or refreshments, despite the presence of a large sign above the door indicating “cafeteria” and (with characteristic bilingual utility) “caffeteria.”

However, coming into the auditorium, the audience was greeted with large blocks of the best seating, plastered with “reserved” notices for the large party of VIP’s that were at the reception upstairs and, it seems, heartily enjoying the free drink and food.

Personally, there is something incongruous and unsettling to me about wanting to provide access to great theatre in an area of acknowledged economic and social deprivation, using £40,000 from the government’s regeneration budget in order to make it happen, and then slapping yourself on the back for doing so with such a display of privilege and exclusivity.

With all the politicians, local government officials and arts grandees that were present, at least Neil Murray, the Newport-born Executive Producer of the NTS, had the good grace to sit among the paying punters. As did, I should say, Leighton Andrews AM, the government minister in attendance.

I can’t be sure that the performance was not sold out (indeed, I was given the impression that it had done), but there did seem to be quite a few empty seats, which begs some questions about whether the production had managed to reach its intended audience in Ebbw Vale. I sincerely hope the data will be able to prove that it did, but on the evidence of my own eyes I could not be so sure. 

Given the lack of a strong central media in Wales, it is sometimes difficult for promoters to communicate to audiences. However, I can’t say I noticed much of a marketing campaign for the production. Aside from the invited guests, a good proportion of the audience consisted of the theatre community, many of whom, myself included, had driven up from Cardiff or Swansea. Perhaps some of the VIP’s did not turn up, but, if one were to add together the empty seats, the invited guests and the theatre professionals, I would estimate that it amounted to at least a third of the audience.

The profile of the remainder seemed to be predominantly middle-aged. Perhaps drawn to the military and historical aspect of the show, there was a stronger showing from middle-aged men than might have been expected. I had heard talk of buses being laid on to facilitate people who might find transport an obstacle, including young people, but I only noticed one mini-bus arriving and young people were in a minority in the audience.

Now much of this evidence is anecdotal and empirical, but it is widely acknowledged that ACW has been as proactive as it has in bringing Black Watch to Wales in anticipation of the new national theatre and as an example of the impact it can make. As many were sitting directly opposite me, I couldn’t help but speculate about what was going through the minds of the board members of the new company, as they followed the performance. In some ways, it was easy to be sympathetic towards them, not least, because a landmark piece of Scottish theatre, which has achieved world-wide success, was being laid out before them. At the very least, the artistic challenge must have seemed daunting.

Moreover, I had the sense that some in attendance were a little perplexed by Black Watch’s innovation and its honesty. In my experience, new work from Wales that features strong language and a degree of unfamiliarity is treated by some venue managers with a level of distrust and a non-negotiable certainty that it will not play to their audiences. Indeed, I noticed some yawning and staring at the ceiling from those very people at certain points in Black Watch.

But what I am really trying to get at is that if a hugely praised, world-class piece of theatre comes to Wales and fails to reach its intended audience, what message does that imply for the new national company?

By comparison with the NTS, the new national theatre will have to face a number of demanding challenges. A quick inspection of the back of the Black Watch programme speaks to the heart of one of them. The NTS employs thirty four full or part-time members of staff and a further seven freelance administrative staff on a regular basis. In 2008/09, the NTS will receive £4.3 million in annual revenue from the Scottish government. Whereas I understand that the new national company in Wales will receive £1.3 million in its first year of full operation and intends to employ no more than nine or ten permanent staff.  

However, one of the most telling aspects of the whole evening for me was the outstanding contribution to its success from its Movement Director, Steven Hoggett. There was water-like fluidity, impressive daring and rigorous precision to the movement that Steven had developed with the actors that was absolutely spine-tingling and made for some of the production’s stand-out moments. For example, the signing sequence that accompanied the soldiers’ response to receiving letters from home was heartrendingly beautiful. But it was also to be found in the small detail of the ensemble work when, for example, a contentious question from the writer (played by Michael Nardone) met with a collective setting back in the chair or a small, but simultaneous adjustment in position.

Aside from recognising the work, the reason for emphasising this is that Steven is Artistic Director of the hugely successful Frantic Assembly, a company that was formed in Swansea in the early Nineties and left Wales after four years, because, as Steven once said to me, “it felt like we were banging our heads against a brick wall in order to get any support or funding.” 

If that doesn’t express the inversion of short-term fix over artist development that has been  palpable for so long in Wales, I don’t know what does.

Go and see Black Watch, it’s great.

Max, Measure and Marc…

Max Jones is one of the most exciting graduates to emerge from the Theatre Design course at The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, which has been transformed under the guidance of Sean Crowley and his team to become one of the very best places to study in the whole of the UK. Max caught my attention with the flair and bravura of his graduate showcase designs back in 2001 and has worked with me on several productions since. With this year’s RWCMD graduates Theatre Design exhibition from June 5th -11th at the college itself and at Soho Theatre from June 26th - 28th, it will be interesting to see who is going to be following in the footsteps of the likes of Hayley Grindle, Rhys Jarman, Sophie Mosberger, Tom Scutt, Colin Richmond and Adam Wiltshire - all of whom, like Max, have been making exciting progress.

Max has established a good relationship with Clwyd Theatr Cymru also, working with both Tim Baker and Phillip Breen.  So it was worth the trip to see how subtly and imaginatively Max had transformed the Emlyn Williams Studio at Clwyd for Phillip Breen’s recent production of Measure For Measure. The seating had been re-configured to a thrust setting and this lent a welcome intimacy to the performance, which was located in a fin-de-siecle Vienna of the late nineteenth century. Unless you knew the space, you might have been hard pressed to realise that Max had created a wholly new arched back wall, housing a beautiful, circular stained glass window, not unlike this…

Its central, dominating position lent underlying symbolism to the exploration of mercy and justice in the play, which I found unexpectedly moving. The subterranean jailhouse, situated directly and hellishly beneath, was also a nice touch. 

Having seen the Complicite production at The RNT some years ago, I must say that I found Phillip Breen’s production had a deeply engaging clarity and coherence, whereas Simon McBurney’s production had been full of self-conscious artifice and distance. While McBurney, casting himself as Duke Vincentio, played the final scene in that production as a press conference into a microphone, Breen’s take on it offered greater rewards. Presaging the miraculous reconciliation of Shakespeare’s later play The Winter’s Tale, it quelled scepticism at its ending through the emotional charge of its playing and the accumulated impact of the storytelling.   

Despite a deeply intelligent performance from Leila Crerar as Isabella, for once the powerful Isabella/Angelo storyline did not overpower the slightly problematic role of the Duke, which I was delighted to see my old friend David Fielder giving full value to. Indeed, there was strong work throughout the company with contributions from CTC regulars Steven Elliott, Brendan Charleson, Louise Collins, Richard Elis and others. The costumes, as one might expect from a company run by Terry Hands, were beautifully detailed and appropriate.

Some days later, Marc Rees and I had a chat and a drink in the late afternoon sun at Chapter. Marc has been invited by Volcano to be a guest director on a series of performances called Unknown Pleasures. Marc has chosen to develop a piece inspired by that great Swansea landmark The Palace Theatre, which is now, sadly, disused and dilapidated.

A Grade II listed building, The Palace is one of the first things you can see as you exit Swansea railway station (on the right hand side) and began its life as a music hall where the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Lily Langtry and Marie Lloyd performed. In the post-war years, it housed a short-lived repertory company that gave a debut to Anthony Hopkins and, later on, it became a bingo hall and then an iconic gay nightclub. Unfortunately, the building has struggled to find a use since it was sold in 2002.

Marc has been researching the history of the Palace and has even had access to a recent feasability study for its use a music venue. With the distinctive wedge-shaped building in danger of falling down, however, Marc is convinced that its most likely destination is to be converted into a block of flats, which I find incredibly sad.

Marc has also been interviewing people who have worked in the building, including a lovely old amateur actor called Kerry Wilcox (now aged 80) that I performed with at the Swansea Little Theatre when I was seventeen, and Keith Millward, who produced Sondheim’s Follies in the building when it was in a slightly better state of repair than it is now. There’s a wonderful symmetry about the idea of performing Follies at the Palace, rather than in a West End theatre, pretending to be crumbling and abandoned. Unfortunately, Marc’s show cannot take place at the Palace itself because it’s too far gone, but can be seen at The Taliesin Arts Centre on May 29th.

Don’t Look Back In Anger

In a recent post, Andrew Haydon has speculated about the number of theatre-related blogs which, for a variety of reasons, have recently become dormant. On top of which, David Eldridge is now probably sick of the number of valedictory e-mails and posts mourning the departure of One Writer And His Dog. Perhaps the diminishing blogosphere has cast a shadow over my own lack of activity in the last couple of weeks, or maybe I’ve just been too damn lazy as there’s been plenty to see, do and think about, but it would be a shame to think that what Haydon refers to as the “contracting” blogosphere was related to a contracting desire amongst people to engage in, talk about and riff around the subject of theatre in whatever patch they inhabit.

I don’t think I’ve been alone in finding it useful as a way of exchanging ideas and keeping up to date with what’s going on in places that I can’t get to right now. What is interesting to me, however, is the number of people in the industry that, it seems, now pore over every post on such sites as a way of gleaning gossip and inside info. On the one hand, people seem addicted to the sense of personal acquaintance that seems to be on offer, but, on the other hand, most seem disinclined to reciprocate. Of course, life is too short for some people to move beyond their own anonymity and not everyone is interested in offering up their opinions, but it interests me that individuals in the arts are now so enthusiastic about Facebook groups and YouTube shorts and yet so unwilling to reveal much about what they are actually thinking. Happy for such innovations to be adapted to marketing, it seems to me that they would be horrified to be found saying what they really think.

Another example of this trend is demonstrated by the Theatre In Wales website - until recently an essential part of the opinion forming around theatre in these parts, but, for over a year or more now, its discussion forum has seemed pretty much moribund. No doubt, this is related to people getting fed up with the anonymous ranting and the virtual duffing up that passes for argument, but, in my mind at least, there is also a prevailing anxiety about speaking out in case one gets targetted. As I have argued before, this becomes a serious issue when there is such a deficit of dialogue from artists about their concerns. Unlike London, where a critical mass of opinion is relatively easy to generate, the sheer geography of Wales contributes to a theatre sector that suffers from what I can only describe as a lack of coherent leadership within the arts and true dialogue with itself.

Anyway, I mentioned that there had been plenty to see, do and think about…

First off the bat was Sherman Cymru’s Springboard/Egin festival between April 11-20. I went to a few things over the first weekend and particularly enjoyed Alan Harris’ verbatim play about the closure of the Burberry factory in Treorchy. The presence of some of the women involved in the protests against the closure gave an added dimension to the performance, as they were clearly so moved to see and hear their experiences represented. Assembly Member Leighton Andrews was also in the audience to re-live the campaign that he and Labour MP Chris Bryant (brilliantly portrayed with a mixture of other-worldliness and outright narcissism by Derek Hutchinson) had fought so tenaciously and imaginatively to keep in the public eye. It was appalling to realise the complacent arrogance with which Burberry treated its workforce, but the campaign team’s cunning exploitation of this complacency was at the heart of its success, not least the way in which they used the commercial “face” of Burberry, Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd, to turn opinion against them. By the end of the saga, Burberry seemed desperate to settle, but that humiliation was nothing compared to the people who had worked ther whole lives in the factory and now saw little chance of ever being employed again. Globalised employment conditions may be easily absorbed in certain parts of the country, but, unfortunately, different criteria apply in Treorchy.

That said, I’m slightly dubious about the term “festival,” which for many under-utilised dramatists here in Wales is not so much ironic, as a pointed display of black-edged gallows humour. Of course, as an opportunity for work-in-progress to be tested and to develop some collegiality among individual writers, there is some obvious benefit. For audiences, on the other hand, the offer is more complicated and, perhaps, on the evidence of the events I attended, obscure.

However, many people remember Made In Wales’ annual Write On Festival at The Sherman in the mid-Nineties and the sold out buzz that accompanied the work that was being presented then, so the continuing lack of opportunity for writers to receive full productions of their work and the increasing numbers of “emerging” writers without a viable platform on which to build a career, definitely contributes to a widespread feeling of weary cynicism, particularly amongst playwrights, that is acknowledged here. 

Weary cynicism was not the order of the day at this month’s Dirty Protest (aka Dirty Protest 4), however. Its organisers certainly know a thing or two about how to reach an audience and their sheer ebulliance is both infectious and engaging. With the declared aim of “starting a revolution” against “stuffy theatre,” there is much to admire in its guerrilla tactics and disarming have-a-go energy. While pointedly referring to the ongoing lack of opportunity for writers and directors, Dirty Protest is confidently mapping out a future programme of eclectic one-nighters that includes the Latitude Festival, the National Eisteddfod and a new Cardiff venue, Ten Feet Tall. While the writing is inevitably of variable quality and, as I have argued before, the energy it offers can never be a replacement for the kind of dynamic critical mass that Cardiff’s theatre so desperately requires, it’s impact is great while it lasts. 

At Dirty Protest 4 (and on Facebook), the company were looking for support by asking people to fill in the rest of a sentence: “I think the Arts Council should give Dirty Protest cash because…” Unfortunately, the past efforts of similarly energetic and unfunded groups have fizzled out because the Arts Council has found it so easy to ignore that implicit demand. As Alan Davey, the new Chief Executive of ACE, has bravely announced that funding for his organisation’s new set of priorities is going to be found from a 15% saving in ACE’s administrative costs, I wonder what ACW is thinking.

I was back in London for a day or so last week and spent Thursday evening at Soho Theatre, watching the press night of Suspect Culture and Graeae’s collaboration on Dan Reballato’s Static. Subsequently, the reviews have been genuinely mixed and, while Lyn Gardner offers a perceptive and sensitive critique of its different layers here, I had my own reservations. Both female characters felt drastically underwritten and, given that one of the women was, in effect, driving the narrative (as she sought to uncover the hidden meaning behind a mysterious compilation tape) it felt severely unbalanced. It seemed as if the playwright had so enjoyed the character of Martin (the deceased’s best friend) in his comic obsession with music ephemera there wasn’t much room for anyone else. That said, there were some cherishably funny lines and some touching moments. Suspect Culture are well known for the quality of their mixed-media work and Graeae are pushing the boundaries for disabled performers, but, unfortunately, I found the denoument played out to Rufus Wainwright’s already melodramatic Agnus Dei overblown and secondhand.  

DV8’s new production, on the other hand, To Be Straight With You is quite simply breathtaking. I could spend forever trying to describe to you how much I enjoyed it, but - don’t worry - I won’t. Whatever you do, just go and see it. It’s genius.

 

Mmm… Nice

Under Chris Ricketts, Sherman Cymru is at last beginning to position itself as the contemporary performance house that many of us had been hoping for and working towards. The programme is beginning to become more coherent and the range of work is starting to reflect the high quality of touring work available that Cardiff, not to say Wales as a whole, has been missing out on for far too long.

From dance theatre, physical and visual work to text-based work and new writing, there is a commendable commmitment to innovation and distinctiveness, as well as to high quality. While the jury is out on its capacity to match the diverse bought-in programme with in-house productions, despite recent reviews for Almond and The Seahorse, it’s good to see artists such as DV8, the RSC, NTS, The Royal Court and Tim Crouch performing on its stages. In light of which, last week’s visit of the Michael Clark Company to the venue was a thrill and one of the highlights of my recent theatregoing.

Michael Clark has long been described as an “enfant terrible”  and “a wayward genius,” which always results in ”terrible” and “wayward” eclipsing the rest. Certainly, there was an interesting discussion behind me, as I took my seat, when an elderly woman was asking the young woman with her whether she had an open mind or not. That this was conducted half in Welsh and half in English seemed somehow to set a tone. In the end, however, the nudity of the dancers accompanying Sondheim’s Send In The Clowns was less “in-yer-face” and more hauntingly and gracefully funereal.

Performing Mmm… Stravinsky Project Part 2, Clark’s near obsession with the revolutionary impact of the original Le Sacre Du Printemps  is mined for all its riotous intensity. The post-punk accompaniment of Public Image Limited, Wire and The Sex Pistols was almost enough for me. But there was also an absorbing wit and precision to the work, as it referenced the Fauvist modernism of the original Ballets Russes.

While the shock value of Clark’s work is often dismissed as immature, especially by ballet critics who see betrayal in Clark’s reinterpretation of his discipline, I can only feel that Clark has integrated camp, outrage and hedonism with technique, intelligence and seriousness into something wonderfully whole and thrilling. Clark is infamous for his distrust of conventional ideas of beauty, but there is something inevitably beautiful about the high precision angularity, asymmetry and counter-balanced tension of his choreography. 

If you want to be glib, you can put this down to “growing up,” to surviving the death of close collaborators such as Leigh Bowery, whose anarchic designs are still credited, and overcoming heroin addiction, but, to someone of my generation, there is a deep and abiding aesthetic at work here that transcends mere biography.     

What Are You Doing Here, Citizen Of The World?

Last Saturday, I rushed down to Swansea’s Taliesin Theatre in the rain for a mystery tour courtesy of Volcano Theatre. Having arrived, the audience was promptly shepherded on to a bus and driven to a warehouse in Landore opposite the city’s own Liberty Stadium. With convenient irony, liberty was confronted by its opposite in the shape of an authoritarian gang of uniformed guards, led by Gerald Tyler, forcing us to undertake a surreal citizenship test where knowing that Brian Blessed possesses the best British beard was key to your successful application to remain.

Called What Am I Doing Here?, Volcano presented us with a characteristically surreal and off-kilter offering that was part performance, part lecture, part field-trip and part old-skool happening. For my taste, the show was a little too long and there was diminishing mileage to be gained from the satirical indignities of the selection procedure, but there were plently of diverting highlights, not least Marega Palser’s Lynchian rendition of Somewhere Over The Rainbow  while wearing a plastic mask and cavorting to Gareth Clark’s electric guitar in a room the size of a broom cupboard.

In some ways, the use of Swansea Museum’s storage warehouse as the location seemed to offer too many distractions from the original premise of citizenship, especially when the focus turned to its use as a repository of local identities and histories. Even then, however, there were engaging details, such as the sweet use of performer Fern Smith’s own 1970’s school reports indicating that she needed to be “less verbose and metaphorical,” if she wanted to succeed at English Literature. It was also the first time that I have left a venue being waved off by the cast as I was driven away in a bus.

As we departed Landore, each member of the audience clutched tight their own certificate denoting whether they were “Approved” or “Rejected.” Happily, I was “approved,” but, I won’t lie to you, right, I think it was a fix… 

Peter Doran, hero

There used to be an old Monty Python joke about Swansea being bombed in the war and how it caused three and a half pence worth of damage in old money. As I come from Swansea, I can’t officially find that funny. So any similar crack about bombs dropping on Milford Haven would be just as unworthy. However, if a bomb had dropped on Milford last Wednesday, it could easily have decimated the entire arts establishment of Wales (you didn’t think there was one, did you?), as so many had turned up for the official re-opening of The Torch Theatre and its gala production of Melvyn Bragg and Howard Goodall’s musical, The Hired Man.

Peter Doran, its Artistic Director, has achieved a small miracle in West Wales. Having been part of the original company when it launched 30 years ago, Peter has heroically kept the faith in what this theatre could achieve after many others had given up on it. Milford may be situated on the glorious Pembrokeshire coast, but it is a rugged little town that hangs on to the industries born of its unique natural deep harbour with something like grim determination amid all the charity shops, pubs and fast food outlets. 

For many years, the Torch was run as an afterthought with some of its Artistic Directors calling in the productions from their far distant homes in more comfortable areas. Having grown up in West Wales, Peter was the first to base himself in the area and has spent ten years transforming the theatre from a run-down, deficit-haunted venue of last resort into a modern, welcoming and thoroughly popular multi-purpose arts centre with a hugely loyal local audience and a growing relevance to the whole of theatre in Wales.

Times were so bad in the early years of Peter’s tenure that, famously, he plumbed in all new showers and re-tiled the actors’ dressing rooms because they were in such a terrible state. Seven years on, the theatre has had a complete refurbishment and has been considerably developed with a new studio theatre, office space, gallery and bar. It’s inspiring to see what he has achieved at such a distance from the metropolitan centres and how proud local people are of their re-born theatre, which possesses one of the most intimate and actor-friendly stages in Wales.

The production of The Hired Man was, of course, sold out for its entire run and it was as much as I could do to stop my partner singing along throughout. Having been a notorious flop when it first went into The West End, it now seems to have become a staple part of the repertoire across the UK. Indeed, yet another version is touring at the moment produced by the East Midlands-based New Perspectives.

The Torch’s production is different in that it has been fairly successfully transposed from the North of England to Pembrokeshire, but the engaging score is good compensation for the inevitably out-dated politics and its soft-edged take on rural exploitation of the poor. Indeed, there was a fairly hefty irony in the ensemble’s particularly fervent singing of the merits of being “a union man” when a good proportion were not even Equity members, but, nevertheless,  it seems churlish to deny its popular appeal and the regular Torch audience is clearly lapping it up, even if other commentators were determined to resist its charms. 

As a whole, however, the gala night summed up everything that is good about The Torch and the only regret is the impact it’s had on Doran’s sense of style…

 

A Message about Our Saviour at Easter

Last week, ACW finally announced that Peter Tyndall was stepping down as Chief Executive, confirming what many in the arts had known for some time. Tyndall is heading off to be the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales and has been receiving much praise for his stewardship of ACW during a tumultuous period in its history, having been described by The Western Mail as “its saviour.”  

Indeed, Tyndall inherited his post at a time of great difficulty. Some now credit him with rebuilding ACW from a highly weakened position after its handling of the ill-fated Drama Strategy at the end of the nineties and various other misfortunes that led to the resignation in 2001 of Joanna Weston, Tyndall’s predecessor. Simply to have survived this seven year period as Chief Executive of an intact ACW could be deemed to be an achievement in itself, but it seems fair to say, despite my current criticisms, that Tyndall’s characteristic tenaciousness and pragmatism has ultimately delivered more than that.  

Nevertheless, such tributes do tend to overlook the strong contributions of Sybil Crouch and Geraint Talfan Davies in their respective periods as Chair of ACW. It also overlooks the reality that ACW continued to be a victim of circumstance up until the Assembly vote in 2006 (which the government lost by a hair’s breadth) and leading to the preservation of ACW as an arms length body. The sense is that Tyndall personally and the organisation as a whole experienced a huge confidence boost after this, which has been reflected in a range of initiatives and tying up of loose ends as his departure approaches. 

No doubt Peter Tyndall was the right person to lead ACW through this particularly difficult period, but, now that the political storm around ACW is abating, the true extent of the damage to the arts here is becoming (at least, to me) more and more apparent.  

In respect of the recent history, pragmatism and tenaciousness are surely ideal qualities. ACW has also suffered from a divided arts community where the seeking of opportunistic advantage has been a constant theme. Plenty of people were prepared to wait to see which way the wind blew at the very point when ACW was at its most vulnerable. However, pragmatism and tenaciousness have their darker associations too, so why would the context ACW found itself in lead to anything other than a tendency to reflexive self-protection and a reactiveness to the political temperature? 

As a consequence, it has often felt like initiatives have progressed tactically, rather than because of strategic need emanating from true engagement with the arts sector itself. Nevertheless, the headline focus on sustainability and refurbishing the infrastructure will have lasting significance for ACW’s legacy from this period and Peter Tyndall deserves full credit for overseeing that. 

The challenge now, particularly in theatre, is for ACW to find a way to engage with a community that, because it has traditionally appeared apathetic, fractured and disillusioned, has too often been held at a convenient distance and distrusted. Of course, new money helps breed confidence, especially if it leads to greater opportunity. But it is not just about opportunity. It is also about truly engaging in dialogue to develop a vision that reflects the kind of theatre that artists want, as well as the one that audiences and politicians want.  

There has long been a feeling that ACW does not have the artform expertise at officer level that it should have anymore. Gilly Adams was the last widely respected Drama Officer at ACW and is still fondly remembered for her advocacy of artists and her ability to relate to the sector. Unfortunately, while the old style drama panels encouraged preferential treatment and cronyism, nothing better has taken their place and the question of where ACW’s artistic expertise resides is still open. 

Additionally, it does seem like the faces have not changed for a very long time and are often spoken of as being out of touch or overly influenced by a narrow circle of acquaintances. Of course, the job is difficult and not everyone will be happy, but the advantage ACE has is that there is a regular turnover of incoming officers, who bring fresh influences to bear and new experience to light. The problem, I perceive, is that the whole debate around excellence, which The McMaster report has prompted in England, is in danger of passing us by here.  

I am not an advocate of “hierarchies” in the arts and many in Wales are suspicious even of the word “excellence”, so I just want to point to the mission of McMaster’s report, which was to consider:

• How the system of public sector support for the arts can encourage excellence, risk-taking and innovation;
• How artistic excellence can encourage wider and deeper engagement with the arts by audiences;
• How to establish a light touch and non-bureaucratic method to judge the quality of the arts in the future.

Unlike one director who argued recently that theatre-makers have no place on boards because they should be making theatre, McMasters argues that every board should have at least two artists on it. To me, it is encouraging that inquiry is taking place around how the arts can rejuvenate and develop themselves in order to still have relevance in twenty years time, rather than looking to old models and replicating them. Also, most importantly, it is implicit that both government and McMasters value artists as an important resource in themselves and are looking to create a framework that values and includes their contribution accordingly.  

I hope that ACW is listening and starts giving some serious thought to how it can engage with artists and build consensus on a future vision. There is a typically insightful piece by Lyn Gardner here about how this might happen. 

As for Peter Tyndall, it’s a job well done. Thanks and good luck. Can we have a Chief Executive with a strong arts focus now please?

No Logo

Centre for Performance Research is still fighting for its existence. While browsing through the impressive list of its supporters here, I came across this sobering message from Mike Pearson.

Mike was a co-director of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, a precursor to CPR, as well as the legendary and pioneering Brith Gof, so he has a more than passing acquaintance with the vicissitudes of ACW’s strategies and policies, having experienced the painful turmoil of ACW’s axe in the late nineties. He writes:

“Once again, there is that failure of will and imagination to acknowledge the on-going significance of practices organically grown rather than the bureaucratically made. Again, that systemic lack of appreciation of independent vision and application sustained as life-long commitment rather than as response to short-term incentive… Again, that propensity to render ‘surplus to requirements’ those regionally developed, mature, reflective and self-critical approaches that are the repositories of hard-won and deeply wrought theatrical knowledge and expertise… Again, that inability to value achievements internationally recognised that ostensibly fail to fulfil the latest imperatives in funding policy and provision…”

I think that nails what is happening in the current environment very lucidly indeed.  

Admittedly, ACW has had limited room for manoeuvre in this post-devolution world, as government has sought to wrestle greater and greater political control over a public body that is supposedly at arms length. That said, ACW has had substantially more investment to play with, despite government’s continuing insistence on, as it were, hypothecating that spending. As a consequence, ACW has become more and more reactive to government, seeking to generate fresh investment through apparently eye-catching initiatives, such as the national theatre. However, the hollowness of such initiatives is well captured by Roger Owen in an article I discovered only recently, despite it being published in Planet Magazine some time ago: 

“The whole idea is that a high public profile for these organisations, coupled with a generous resource allocation and their reclassification as “national” institutions, will guarantee an audience for their output. Indeed, it wouldn’t be too much to state that this arrangement is intended to replace the essential relationship with the audience as the primary focus for the company’s existence. As Naomi Klein puts it in No Logo, these companies’ chief role is to project the “image of their brand”. And while this, of course, involves the basic promotion of the company’s material product, the quality of that product isn’t necessarily the be-all and end-all.” 

The reality is that bureaucracy and opportunism continue to overwhelm the genuine aspirations of the arts sector, while ACW remains overly preoccupied with structures, strategies and initiatives that have long since drained any conviction of their efficacy out of the people actually engaged in making the work. 

I mention this because the recent announcement of appointments to the board of the new national theatre has caused much muttering and grumbling. As a recent spat on the Theatre in Wales website has demonstrated, there is feeling around that, yet again, this particular initiative is shaping up to be conservative and anodyne, where it should be brave and visionary. Perhaps this is misplaced and I genuinely feel that some individuals on the board are decent people who could make the necessary difference, but it will be a disaster if the optimism engendered by the choice to model the new organisation on the National Theatre of Scotland results in this, rather than this.