EATU RE LIST
surprised. ‘I suppose it has got lots of harrowing bits in it — but it’s got lots of funny bits as well. I think it’s quite honest and I think everybody’s childhood is still in them, so it can touch things off. I think a lot of disappointment in people is due to their childhood.’
Dowie’s performance tells the story of an unloved girl growing towards a break-down. It is a one-woman show, but as Dowie explains, it’s not acted and as such, is unusual.
Dowie herself is a comedian who has done a great deal of cabaret, but she also writes drama and poetry, and has become interested in fusing the different areas of her work: ‘Cabaret is usually only asking for one emotion — laughter. I wanted to do something more, to reach other emotions.‘ (SI-I.) Adult Child, Third Eye. 14 Nov.
MAN ACT
Man Act One made audiences sit up with its beautifully choreographed, often funny exploration of male power struggles. In Man Act Two, ‘Miracles‘, the same partnership (Simon Thorne and Philip MacKenzie) start on similar ground — with the relationship between two
Lelt Laurie Booth and Toby Sedgewick in a dance piece based on a Chesterton short story (Third Eye, 21 Oct). Below: Dogs in Honey (Third Eye. 16 Oct) who explore sexual rituals. Below Right: The wall behind which Mona Hatoum creates the alienated existence of living in the Lebanonese war (Third Eye, 14-16 Oct). Below Far Bight: Forlrbeard Fantasy their weird and wonderlul show about bugs, hypochondria and “Domestic Wildlile’. (Third Eye, 30 & 31 Oct; Traverse, 3-8 Nov).
men — but develop it much further.
We see two elderly men in the act ofcompiling a letter on tape to a small boy far away. They have been together so long that their communication with one another has grown into a code based on mutual understanding, and as they go through their daily ritual in their small shabby living room, and decide what they should pass on of their experience to the small boy a moving exploration ofwhat is valuable in life begins to develop.
The nature of their relationship seems to shift constantly — are they lovers, old friends, brothers? — but it continuously creates a tremendous sense of tenderness and caring (3H,) Miracles, Third Eye, 20 and 21 Nov; Traverse 24—29 Nov.
LARGE SCALE INTERNATIONAL ‘It’s about living in Britain now. It’s about politics. It’s about how women are treated by men and how men are treated by women. It’s about history, about seventies history particularly. And all those dreadful records you bought during the seventies. It is about sex. But it’s not only about sex. You’d have to see it to understand.’ Seeing is understanding could be the motto of the whole
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‘New Work, No Definition' season, and it certainly holds good for Andy Walker, founder of Large Scale International and director oftheir latest production ‘S/he‘. The show, as he explains, uses images ofsexual violence, gradually developing an image ofthe male body beautiful ‘then exposing the crap underneath’ — but is about far more than sex, and resists intellectual explanation: ‘I have an idea and I put it in a space and leave it to the audience to decide what’s going on. It’s not about big intellectual ideas. Ijust want to see something on stage, so I make it happenf
For his next show Walker hopes to involve an orchestra of fifty, bulldozers, his Dad and his Nan. At the moment, however, his main preoccupation is adapting the highly volatile show ‘S/he‘ to fit into the confined spaces of the Traverse. ‘Nobody‘s going to get hurt. But the audience shouldn’t switch off. I do
believe in entertaining people, but I don’t believe in just producing entertainment. Ifthere wasn’t anything else to it there would be no point going up there. We can all stay at home and watch TV ifwe want to switch off.’ (S.H.) S/he, Traverse, 17—22 Nov.
Above: tradition debilitation.Glasgow School of Art students whose installations are created for their environment. (Third Eye,
21 -24 Oct). Lelt: Annie Grillin, Below: Claire Dowie
GARY STEVENS
‘A wolf in sheep’s clothing’ is how Gary Stevens describes his show ‘If the Cap Fits’: ‘It looks like a jolly romp, but I hope it leaves a critical aftertaste.’
‘If the Cap Fits’ is a bizarre comedy in which two people become inextricably caught up in an accretion of props and costumes. Its concern is to explore how people don’t know certain areas of themselves, its style is arrived at obliquely, however. ‘I trained as a sculptor,‘ explains Stevens. ‘1 think of myself as a sculptor negotiating theatre. The person and the text become the material from which I am making meaning. It‘s a different approach.’
Overcoming preconceptions he sees as one of the main problems for innovative theatre today; ‘Lots of artists have solved the problem of entertaining. When they’re in, the audiences are enjoying themselves. The problem is getting them through the door in the first place. And there is a great resistance in institutions to things that are saying something not explicitly, but implicitly, through the structure ofthe work.’ (S.H.) Ifthe Cap Fits, Third Eye, 27 Oct. Also Assemblv Rooms. Edin. 24 Oct.
The List 16 — 29 October 5