Not about running

It's not about running,

It's not about pushing,

It's not about shouting,

It's not about bombing,

It's not about petting,

It's not about ducking.

I'm currently working on a project in Lisbon called Learning to Swim. I've contributed some text and officially I am offering "dramaturgical support". We sometimes refer to this as "sticking an oar in".

The project is being made in a derelict swimming pool - Piscina Municipal Do Areeiro. When I was here two weeks ago, it looked like this:

(there are more images of the pool in it's found state on our Flickr pages here).

Learning To Swim started life in the early discussions for Off The White, a piece I made with Paula Diogo as part of Teatro Praga's Shall We Dance project. Slightly confusingly, Off The White took its name from a short story I wrote about jumping off a high diving board - because Paula liked it - which later turned up in Words & Pictures. However, Off The White, the performance, was not about diving boards but instead inspired by my obsession with Empty Benches. An edited version of it also turned up as a chapter in Words & Pictures, under the title Benchers.

(This is an extreme example of the confusion that can occur when a title has to be committed to some time in advance of making the work.)

In discussing themes for what our Shall We Dance piece might be about by email, we hit on the fact that Paula has never learned to swim. And as Off The White went off on a tangent to be about benches, we knew that there was another show we were interested in making. The texts I have contributed to Learning to Swim are my half of a series of letters to/from Paula about that initial discovery, and thoughts about water, swimming, dancing, learning, teaching, leading and following.

When I arrived at the piscina that we are making the show for on Tuesday evening, some of the performers were assembled in the pool playing a song. Listening, I was thinking that it sounded familiar, wondering if it was a cover version. Then I realised that it was one of the texts that I had written, adapted into lyrics. I was surprised how well they scanned.



When I was in the process two weeks ago, we were juggling material created at several different stages of making the work, in both swimming pools and rehearsal studios, and responding, naturally, to the environment of this particular pool. The material that felt the strongest was that which seemed to be born out of the actual site, whilst exploring our original themes.

It felt like we had a really strong opening (a tour of the site coupled with a found text of the rules for using the pool, now strange and melancholy when heard amongst the debris of the vandalised site) and ending, a generous invitation to the audience to join in a (water-free) sort-of-pool-party. In between these two was a shifting playlist of texts and material, all of which we were interested in but weren't quite hanging together. We were exploring what behaviour works in this empty pool - do we still try to treat it as a pool (like some sort of leisure-activity-reenacting society in a water-scarce future), or respond to it more as an interesting split level space which allows performers to disappear and reappear using the pool steps.

I particularly liked a moment where, all leaping in, they treated the pool as a pool, but on foot, running lengths and widths, going off at diagonals to find the steps, hanging out in the deep and shallow ends, their whooping voices echoing off the hard surfaces. We talked about allowing the audience to watch as if they were indeed spectators in a public pool, letting their attention wander across many activities happening in front of them. Finding their own points of focus. The issue was that just six performers struggled to produce enough activity for this to work.

Lessons worth learning more than once: It is always interesting being an occasional visitor to a devising process. Watching a run through on that first evening back at the pool, it felt like the show has come into focus. That they have found what it is. There's not that much that's new. In fact, there's less material there. Within the material we had, they have found the frame of the show, and stripped away the material that doesn't work within it. The work is much simpler now, purer, and responds much more clearly to the space; but also, it feels to me, that it responds more definitely to the original impetus.

They've made a few interventions into the space, cleaned just the pool itself, refined the opening tour. And they treat pool as a pool. Without water. As Paula said to me before I watched my first full rehearsal, "It's a lot about running, now."

ARENA Festival - 20 Years

Back in 1999 we took our show Shallow Water to the Arena Festival in Erlangen, having been seen at the Diskurs Festival in Geissen the previous year. Both are international theatre festivals produced by students, and my experience of both, particularly considering that the team that runs each festival changes each year, is that they are fantastic. Both festivals boast an impressive alumni of international theatre makers.

In 2001 I was invited back to Arena as a member of the jury, which was a great experience. The 20th edition of Arena opens this week, and I was asked to contribute something to a book of memories of the festival. Here's what I sent them:

I remember that it was hot that week – and the hotel staff thought I was mad to want to go in the sauna after I had been out for a run. The evenings were warm, and our jury discussions were usually outside.

I remember that every show we saw was distinct – a different genre and a different venue. I remember that I liked all of the shows. I remember the five – I think it was five? - of us sitting around a high café bar table, wondering how on earth we could choose a “winner” out of such a varied selection. We decided that our criteria would be the show that best passed the test it had set itself. We wondered if we were “allowed” to give the prize to the co-production between Akhe and the Arena team. But we had been sent to see it, and, by the criteria we had chosen, and in fact by most criteria we could come up with, it was the “winner”. And it was a great show. I still remember the thrill of the moment the seating bank moved for the first time, and realising that this weird Russian welding show we were watching was just the first part of something much bigger.

I think back on that week fondly. A great festival.

Work in Progress at Pazz

This is a short interview and documentation with me, about What I Heard About The World work-in-progress at PAZZ Festival, from Artmetropol.tv.

Mixtape: Songmap

We were invited by our friends at Unlimited Theatre to take part in their Mixtape project. It’s a lovely idea: they’re inviting a number of artists/theatre-makers/comedians to choose a song they love and create stage action/performance of some sort to accompany it.

As we were in the process of planning a show made up of shorter pieces, it seemed like great timing, and so we incorporated our contribution to Mixtape, into Words & Pictures, which initially was cross between a book reading and a theatrical short story collection. Doing something for Mixtape within the show would provide a different dynamic, and give us an audience for whatever we made.

Making something for Mixtape was a really interesting challenge for us, as using a song – or perhaps music with lyrics is a more accurate distinction – is something we have always shied away from. This is because the lyrics in a song will almost definitely be telling an at-least-slightly-different story to the one you are telling live, and, also, familiar songs carry a whole host of associations about the time and place people became familiar with them in, that as an artist you have no control over.

Of course audiences bring a whole host of other associations in with them that you have no control over, and certainly we've always tried to make work that embraces that, and allows space for those associations to become part of the experience of the work. But with songs, perhaps because they are someone else's work, I've always felt much less comfortable with including them in our live work. And often I don't like it when a song I'm familiar with is used in a theatre piece; I find it distracting.

I’m aware that there are exceptions – certain companies actually use known music well (Unlimited Theatre themselves being an example, and also Oliver Bray’s current show Villa uses popular songs really nicely, not least because Oliver can sing, and because he deliberately uses the lyrics in a tangent to their intended meaning). And also, I often really like the use of well known music in film and TV.

All images: video stills by Christopher Hall

But throughout our work with Third Angel, Rachael and I have always been keen to bring composer/sound designers (most often Lee Sykes and David Mitchell) into the process to score the work. I remember an early conversation in rehearsal for Where From Here with Lee in fact, where, penny dropping, he said to us, “You don’t want a show sound track – you want a film score.” And Rachael and I replied “Yes!” in unison, suddenly understanding our own intentions better. On the occasions when we have used found music it has nearly always been relatively-not-well-known instrumental stuff.

All of which is a preamble to saying that we knew we wanted to give our song space - let it lead the action.

What we didn't know was what song we wanted to use. We both had suggestions, and a complex multi-blackboard Venn-diagram appeared on the wall of the workspace early on. We tried several songs, and at one point were both going to be listening to a different pieces of music on headphones whilst the audience listened to a third. Then we lost our two individual songs, and began work on texts to read over Wim Mertens' Maximising The Audience.

I wrote:

We’ve been trying to understand songs.

We’ve been trying to choose a song. Should that song mean something to either, or both, of us?

How do people write songs? Where do tunes come from? How come songs can be played on different instruments to the ones they were written on? How do you write a drum part when you’re writing a song on a guitar?

We’ve known each other a long time. We have bought each other music, played each other music, copied music from and for each other, been to hear music played live together.

But despite all that, or perhaps because of it, it’s been very difficult to choose one song.

How come some songs are verse chorus verse chorus, and others aren’t? If it isn’t verse chorus, does that mean that technically it isn’t a song?

I once saw a bloke on the bus writing music in a reporter’s notebook. He’d ruled a line in biro between two pairs of lines to make three lines into five – a stave. He looked like he was playing a tune in his head – or tuning in to one, like this, trying to catch it – then noting it down. At the time I couldn’t decide if he was being a pretentious twat or just open to inspiration. Although, I quite fancied a go. But I never got any further than ruling the extra lines in biro.

I’ve started drawing Songmaps – pictograms of the dramatis personae, the locations, the events of particular songs. Trying to pin them down, so I can better find my way around them.

People talk to me about what key certain songs are in, about key changes, minor chords; they talk about things being flat, or out of tune, that sort of thing. I don’t understand what they mean – well, I understand, but I can’t hear it, even after they’ve told me.

I remember a conversation in a Chinese Restaurant Karaoke Bar about the Dark Heart of Karaoke, about how it is one of the last socially acceptable refuges of the bully. Of the delight some people who can sing, or at least who don’t mind getting up singing in front of people, which is of course a different thing entirely, the delight these people exhibit when they talk about making people who can’t sing, or who perhaps are not comfortable getting up and singing in front of other people, which is a different thing entirely, about making these people get up in front of others to sing so they (the singers) can enjoy their (the non-singers) discomfort. We’d had a bit of wine by that point.

So what about this song?

And Rachael wrote:

It’s a horrible thing, not to be a listener of music. Actually, that’s not factually correct. It makes it sound like I’m deaf. Which I’m not. I’m a passive listener.

Sound happens to me more often than not. It imposes itself on me and at times attempts to persuade me to change my state of mind.

But it’s not my passion. It’s not the thing that defines me. I do not have a collection of "my" or "our" songs on a series of carefully hand illustrated mix tapes.

It makes you feel like an outsider at first. A social inadequate. I cannot make small talk about the various albums of Bob Dylan. I can’t name a single song by the Fall; I do not know the name of the lead singer of Massive Attack – if they have a lead singer.

I have tried to keep up. I would tape things off the radio as a kid, despising those older than me who thought the top twenty unimportant and laughed in the face of adults who couldn’t name the current number one. But then the first album I owned - was bought - was Cliff Richard's Silver, so I guess I never really had a fighting chance.

When I was sixteen I quite liked Phil Collins, but pretended it was really Genesis I liked. I even bought one of their earlier albums from an older boy, but I never played it and would struggle to recognise an early hit, and the Peter Gabriel days are definitely out of the window.

And so it went on. There is a catalogue of artists I’ve dabbled with, but to list them would be for purely sentimental and very selfish and boring reasons.

My world is not silent. I like to dance – on my own mainly and not really at parties. I hear songs and sing the same few lyrics – often just ever so slightly wrong - over and over again.

I’m feeling quite upset about this whole thing now. I feel vulnerable, naked in my admission. I feel you will think there is something not quite right about me. I shouldn’t have said anything. You are going to feel sorry for me now, you are going to pity the fact I can’t name a single Smiths album.

I do not own an I pod.
I do not now how an MP3 player works or really what it is.
I have not bought any music for at least five years.
I threw my old tapes away.
I do not own a kitsch, slightly cool vinyl collection.
I can’t listen to music and concentrate.

It’s ok and I bob along to stuff, but it’s not everything, not really something, to me.

But this felt like us talking about a Mixtape piece, rather than making one. We went back to the songmaps idea mentioned in my text, and back to the first song suggested, which was The First Big Weekend by Arab Strap, which, it has to be said, is one of my favourite songs of all time. On the album that it is from, The Week Never Starts Round Here, the song writing is credited as "Most Things Musical: Malcolm Middleton, Most Things Not: Aidan Moffat."

It doesn't have a chorus, as such, although there is a sung refrain towards the end of the song. It's not sung, in fact, apart from that refrain, it's spoken. It has a lot of characters, plenty of locations and many activities and stimulants. Originally we had tried drawing the song on a wall, but that meant the audience saw our backs a lot, and not much of the drawing, either. So we revisited the video-drawing idea that we used in The Lad Lit Project (although we only used it for projected handwriting in the final show). Malcolm Middleton, Aidan Moffat and Chemikal Underground were generous enough to let us use their song and we had a* Mixtape piece: Songmap.

Words & Pictures evolved to become an autobiographical book reading piece, becoming a more focussed solo performance. In this version Songmap is acknowledged as a borrowed 'chapter' in the unwritten book of my life story.



The commission for Mixtape includes documenting the track on video. It's no surprise that when we explained this to Chris, a single camera set up was not going to be enough, and the multi-camera set up allowed for the multi-frame screengrabs you can see in the top two stills.

We premiered the short-film version of Mixtape: Songmap at Curve after a performance of Class of '76 last month, and were really pleased that the 'will he keep up with the song?' tension of the live performance seems to translate to the recorded version, too. In discussion with the audience at Curve we noted, too, that of course we had chosen a highly narrative song, that indeed works, perhaps more in the video version, theatrically.

So, thanks again to Arab Strap, and to Unlimited Theatre, particularly Jon and Kate, for the opportunity and their support.

--

*we did actually keep developing another Mixtape idea, that may surface in the future, too.

--
Songmap features The First Big Weekend by Arab Strap. Words and music by Malcolm Middleton and Aidan Moffat. Courtesy of Chemikal Underground.

Live performance devised and performed by Alexander Kelly and Rachael Walton.
Film version directed and edited by Christopher Hall.
Additional camerawork by Alexander Unwin
Songmap is Third Angel's contribution to Unlimited Theatre's Mixtape project. www.unlimited.org.uk

The film is available for 3 days, 1-3 May 2015, as a #GiftForGIFT.

Supported by Leeds Met Studio Theatre, Off The Shelf Festival of Words & Sheffield Hallam University.
Special thanks to Stewart Henderson, Malcolm Middleton and Aidan Moffat.

"Like You in Another Place"

We're coming to the end of the second week of practical work on What I Heard About The World in Sheffield (with a brief visit to Glasgow halfway through).

We appear to have made a durational work by accident. The 'Research Map' we ran at Forest Fringe Microfestival at The Arches last weekend nicely transferred the research set up in the workspace to a performance situation, and produced a lot of great stories. Over 6 1/2 hours of mapping the world alphabetically using post-it notes we got from Afghanistan to Italy.

All photos, What I Heard About The World (Research Map) at Forest Fringe Microfestival, Glasgow, by Gillian Lees

We are resisting the temptation to transfer exactly the same process to the PAZZ Festival next week, as we want to try out some other material, too, but we will take elements of it with us. Whilst we think the story-drawing / two-word titles and country post-it notes process we were working with is strong, it feels like this is exploring potential material for the 'theatre' version of the show, rather than defining the mechanism or form of it. We don't think a simple country & story list will sustain a 75min theatre piece. We are keen, though, to try a 12 or 14 hour version of the Research Map over the summer, to try and plan out the whole world in one sitting.



For me the live-drawing is nice, and since Glasgow we've been working with projected drawing and mapping which formally develops work we were doing with The Lad Lit Project and on our Mixtape piece Songmap (of which more, soon). Unsurprisingly, we are asking ourselves what the relationship of the three performers (Jorge Andrade, Chris Thorpe and myself) is, between ourselves and between us and the audience.

Some of the material we'll be trying out at PAZZ next week will be about our own relationships with maps, mapping, fakes, replicas, other countries and the world, as well as sharing and gathering more stories.


This fortnight of work has include two inspiring conversations with members of the Worldmapper.org team at the University of Sheffield. A few notes from those meetings:

"You can't be emotionally engaged with your subject matter the whole time."

Maps to help you "think about human beings as being 'like you in another place'."

The number of countries in the world is like bones in the body: about 200 and they fuse as you get older.

We are better at abstract thinking than our grandparents - but not as good at planting potatoes. There has been an almost biological change in the audience.

There are 6.8 Billion people in the world. How much space do they need? Not much to stand in. The entire human race could stand on the Isle of Wight, holding hands. How much space do they need to work in? When they closed down the pits in Welsh mining villages, those communities we’re always going to die. Because there was no way of employing that many people above ground, without building a skyscraper the size of the mines that had been closed.

Maps have been described as collections of white lies. A map gives you an understanding - not the understanding.

If someone is happy there is the assumption that they don't need/deserve economic justice.

So our challenge now, as we prepare to head to Oldenburg to present our work as part of Pazz In Progress, is to pull a few strands out of what we've been working on so far to make a (fairly) cohesive selection of material that explores the issues we want, whilst being open enough to encourage discussion and contribution from the audience.

**

There are more pictures of Forest Fringe Microfestival at The Arches on our Flickr pages and on the Doubtlesshouse website.

The VAT Question

At the State of the Arts conference back in January I asked Ben Bradshaw, Secretary of State for Culture, and Liz Forgan, Chair of Arts Council England, if they (their organisations, I suppose) knew how much VAT the arts contributed to the national coffers, in comparison to the amount of subsidy the arts receive as a whole. I wasn't expecting them to have the figure to hand, obviously, and I knew that it could only be a best guess figure on the VAT, because where do you draw the line...? But I was hoping that they would either know that the figures were known, or that they would think that it would be useful to know these figures.

I was following up from a pertinent question that Jon Spooner of Unlimited Theatre had just asked them, which was: how can we, the creative community, help them to make the case that the Department of Culture, Media and Sport should have its budget maintained at its current level, what ever the outcome of the next election? (Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Culture Secretary was at the event, too). With that in mind, I thought having this information in the public domain might help our case.

Ben Bradshaw took my contact details and promised to get back to me, and I wrote to him after the conference to more fully explain my question. The DCMS Public Engagement & Recognition Unit contacted me this week with the information that is available. So thanks to Ben and to the DCMS staff who researched this. It's not the whole picture, but it is instructive.

I had written to Ben:

My question came from a more specific point I had heard about VAT on theatre tickets, as that is more easy to quantify. A well known theatre director, whose name I now forget, unfortunately, quoted figures in an interview a few years ago, that suggested that VAT on all theatre tickets – so including non-subsidised theatre – actually equals or exceeds the subsidy that the Arts Council has to give to theatre companies. I emailed the Arts Council then to enquire after the figures, but they didn’t have the numbers.

One of the points of raising this, of course, is that the subsidised arts drive and feed into the ‘commercial’ arts. Many of the artists who work in commercial theatre shows, on TV and in film, will also work in the funded theatre sector. The two are inextricably linked.

When this is broadened to the arts as a whole, the effect would be harder to quantify, but that’s because it is more complex. The arts drive, or at least support, the content of all forms of broadcast. How much VAT is raised from the sale of TV, video and stereo equipment? A proportion of that is arguably attributable to the artistic content available for them. How much VAT comes from pre-theatre menus in restaurants. Is VAT paid on art works sold at auction?

I understand therefore that pinning down an exact figure for VAT raised by the arts would be impossible, but it would be interesting to know roughly how it compares to the amount given to Arts Council England.

This week the DCMS responded:

You are right to highlight the important link between subsidised and commercial theatre; this is one of the strong arguments in favour of public funding for theatre, and the arts more widely. A large part of this link is in developing artists and art forms and in widening access to the arts to as many people as possible, and in encouraging excellence at all levels. Part of it is also to do with economic impact.

Which is good to hear. But I'd also like to point out here that whilst I believe this is a valid argument for the support of the subsidised arts, I don't think the fact that they are an "R&D" engine for the mainstream is their raison d'etre. I make, and go and see, small scale, "experimental", devised work for audiences of 200 or less (much less sometimes), because I value the performer - audience relationship that is achieved at that scale, in that mode - I like the eye contact, the intimacy, the immediacy. I think it is important. And that is why it should be funded.

But I know that not everyone thinks that, so I'm interested in being able to counter the 'arts should be able to support themselves if they're any good' and 'how many teachers would that pay for?' arguments.

Which makes the next part from the DCMS very interesting:

You are right to say that VAT income on theatre tickets is greater than the public subsidy theatre receives from Arts Council England. Last year, at London theatres alone, VAT on tickets generated £75m in income. Arts Council England invests just over £100m in theatre.

One way of reading this would be to say that the government doesn’t subsidise theatre, theatre more than pays for itself out of VAT alone, and makes a contribution to the nation’s coffers.

The DCMS only have figures for London theatres, and acknowledge that a further £12m of lottery money went to support theatre in 2008/09. But the DCMS also point out the wider, and better known, arguments for seeing subsidy of the arts as investment that produces a massive return.

However the economic impact of theatre and the subsidised arts is much greater than just VAT. The creative industries, including a number of subsidised sectors, account for 6.2% of the UK’s Gross Value Added (GVA), £16.6bn in exports, and 2m jobs. The subsidised arts also play a major role in attracting inbound tourism, worth £16.3bn, and we know that four million overseas visitors to Britain went to the theatre, ballet, opera or a concert. The relationship between subsidised and commercial arts is vital in maintaining the quality and access that makes the arts, culture and the creative industries so successful.

As our General Manager pointed out to me when we read that yesterday, 2m jobs are also going to channel a lot of employers and employees National Insurance back to the government.

As ever, the thinking is that the arts will have a fight on our hands to maintain the level of government funding we receive in this year's Spending Review, whatever happens on May 6th. I recognise that I have a vested interest in this as this is how I make a living, and I am extremely grateful that Third Angel is an Arts Council England Regularly Funded Organisation. So for me these figures are an important part of the argument.

Better Words Than 'Fake'

We've been getting a great response to out call out for 'true stories of fake things' for our new show, What I Heard About The World. As well as some great stories and anecdotes, we've also had quite a few people say, 'So *what* is it you're looking for?' and '...nope, nothing comes to mind.' Which has helped to refine our brief, and to understand a little better what we're interested in at this stage.

It has confirmed my suspicion that I'm not particularly interested in deception - in fakes, in hoaxes, in cons. (I am interested in all that stuff, actually, but it's not what I think this show is about). So perhaps 'fake' isn't the right work. Checking 'fake' in a thesaurus just produces more words that imply deception, and in fact some of the other words suggested early on might be more helpful. So, how's this:

We're looking for instances where a replica, substitute, simulation or stand-in is used knowingly, in place of the real thing. An alternative, a deputy, a locum, a proxy. An understudy, even. A deliberate, or at least recognised, reliance on the inauthentic. Things that keep us one step removed from the original. Things that might, in the longer term, replace the original. My instinct tells me that this is not a good thing, but of course research so far has thrown up several examples of instances when this is a really positive thing. And of course, as ever, we are looking for ideas that support and challenge our thesis.

The other answer is that we don't *know* what we're looking for. But we'll know it when we find it. So we're also interested in the tangents and digressions that our provocation might throw up in your mind. Anything that our impetus suggests to you, we're interested to hear.

We start the next phase of practical work on What I Heard About The World next week, with two weeks work in Sheffield, including a flying visit to Glasgow, followed by a week in Oldenburg. We'll be sharing our research so far, and inviting more contributions, at the following festivals in the next few months:

Forest Fringe Micro Festival, The Arches, Glasgow, 16 & 17 April
PAZZ Performing Arts Festival, Oldenburg, 28 & 29 April
Forge Festival, Sheffield Theatres, 29 May

So please come and talk to us about the project if you can make it to any of those.

In the meantime, feel free to respond with thoughts and stories by commenting here, or emailing us at alex[at]thirdangel.co.uk. We're also sharing some of the ideas we're sent on Twitter, @AlexanderKelly, and using the hashtag #whatiheardabouttheworld.

Thanks in advance for any contribution you make.

Finally, credit where it's due, the good news, and the schedule: What I Heard About The World, by Third Angel and mala voadora, is a co-production with Sheffield Theatres, Teatro Maria Matos and the PAZZ Performing Arts Festival, in association with Worldmapper.org. Supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England. The show will premiere in Sheffield Theatres' Studio, and then tour in Portugal, in autumn 2010. Further dates in 2011.