V.
also part of the cast. Audiences don‘t so much participate as help to create the whole theatre experience. There's a huge joke played on the audience for the performance. but it’s one I‘m not at liberty to give away. What I can tell you is that you will encounter a touring music hall company and see a bit of their over the top musical routine. Then you‘ll see them bickering. flirting and revealing secrets as they break up the set ready to move on to the next gig. And you‘ll get to know them up close and personal. because the show spills into the auditorium big time. Actors need some courage in approaching audiences in this way. but the cast. who‘ve
joined us. are showing plenty of willing. The
kind of enthusiasm they emanate one might expect from a young cast of student actors taking a show to the Fringe for the first time. but these are seasoned professional actors from all around the world. As well as Spain. lingland and Holland. the USA and Australia are all fielded for the show. and speak with unanimous enthusiasm of the off-the-wall process through which the show is devised.
This is less about the careful preservation of a precious script than the creation of total illusion. There’s a combination of wild grotesquerie and flesh and blood realism in the characters. which is about as tricky a combination as an actor can
'Uu‘n 3’
Theatre
bring off. 'lt‘s totally character driven stuff. It‘s tricky for northern liuropean audiences because they want a script. the words. But audiences here love it.’ says linglish actor Helen Cartwright. ‘lt‘s a high wire act between soap opera and camp. It’s a game which the audience has to buy into. We were never given a script when we first arrived: we just went through it scene by scene. making the characters. Jordi says that what‘s important is not what you say. but the way you say it.’
What this creates in performance is a strange and thrilling ambivalence. where the grotesque suddenly reaches out and touches you with a fully fleshed hand. It also leaves one constantly questioning what is real and
‘FOR ME, THEATRE IS A PLACE TO GET RID OF REPRESSIONS'
what is fiction in the characters. Dutch actress Maria Benet plays a scantily clad and pathologically flirtatious young performer. and finds this ambivalence intriguing. ‘When you go down the aisle. you see people embarrassed to look at you. They feel exposed. They look at you and they’re afraid. You take away their right to be spectators] she says. ‘You get guys coming in with their wives and girlfriends. and they look at me because I'm the actor. but because it‘s so real. they feel like they‘re looking at the woman. and their wives are like . . . land she makes a bemused face]. And sometimes I play with that. it‘s fun. It‘s like “is she looking at me because she likes me. or is the character looking at me?”
This process comes from the origins of the company. La (‘ubana. whose philosophy. forged from practice. questions the boundaries of what is performance and what is real. just as they were questioned by Pirandello. and later. the Happenings movement of the (i()s. For all the bawdy humour of the piece. there's a thought process.
Milan speaks of the company's early days. which are still inscribed in his process: ‘I.a (‘ubana was an amateur company from a small town. We were kids really. when we started in l‘)8(). The first idea we had was to take theatre to the streets. We did shows in shop , windows. marketplaces and in the middle of the city. liven traffic accidents or lights in the street were staged. So people were watchng something which you would later explain to someone. People could see theatre without knowing it was. What people would say in response to this was more interesting than anything we could come up with. People were generating a theatre experience themselves without knowing it. All the theory I have is the product of this practice.’
What you'll really notice. though. is the sense of fun.
The Variety Theatre Company of Gibraltar gets its chance to shine at the Festival in Nuts CocoNuts
Out of the Blue Drill Hall, 473 2000, 15 Aug-3 Sept (not 228.29), various times, £20.
‘- t 18 Aug; 20015 THE LIST FESTIVAL MAGAZINE 65