Unfortunately. his teaching residency has been a victim of the recent Centre closure.
Wendy Houston‘s A wake in Fright is based on Zoo Story by Edward Albee. She describes the characters
’ as trying to be understood. to make
contact. but then not really listening to any answer. She always works from the personal (something she shares with a company she has often performed with. 0V8) believing it is important to know what things mean. She feels that movements are not there by accident: choreography is ’trying to articulate however you‘re feeling‘.
The second triple bill shows David Rousseve . who Milican said was the ‘best on the bill in San Francisco — very interesting‘. She sees his style of
black dance as worlds apart from the 1
British Phoenix types. ‘I think you‘ll find that all of our artists have very important things to say‘ explains Milican. ‘They are responsible. articulate and politicised people.‘ Sarah Skaggs moves to Callas arias rather than her own voice. She is also from New York, and works. like many British dancers nowadays. with the Alexander technique. The Irish component is Anne Seagrave who has a long association with Milican from Midland Group days. Often part of performance art events such as The Review of Live Art. she
is possibly another unclassifiable artist.
What sorts of performances can we expect? "The pure aesthetic does not interest me in its own right.‘ claims Milican. ‘Thcre has to be something else there. French companies like (.‘re Ange don‘t interest me at all. Lots ofour artists are very politicised. why else make work‘?‘
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Just deserts
‘It wasn't a case of doing yet another American playbecause we couldn’t think of anything else,’ explains Andy Arnold, director of the latest Arches’ theatre project, Sam Shepherd‘s Fool For Love. ‘A lot of American theatre is very emotional and very steamy and very fast. But this is a totally different
3 style from the likes of Mamet (The
l Arches performed Sexual Perversity in '; Chicago earlier this year) which is very sharp city talk. This is almost like a
In these uncertain days it is good to i
know that Muscle Voice has been salvaged. Milican feels strongly that ‘the situation has had terrible consequences for artists we‘ve been working with. PS2 gave me a different perspective. Now it‘s all locked away. seats covered with dust-sheets. and it is supposed to be a working space. It‘s all very depressing.‘
If the Scottish dance scene loses New Moves. the Stamping Ground and other events such as Young Spain then it‘ll be a tragedy. But whatever happens down Sauchiehall Street. Milican asserts ‘Compromise is not a word I ever use in my programming policy and I‘m not going to back down. So there!‘. (Tamsin Granger)
Muscle Voice #1 willbe (If The Tramway front Thursday 4—Suturday 5 October.
Muscle Voice #2 will be at The Tramway from Thursday
1 ()—Saturday I 2 October.
John Wayne film or Tennessee Williams.‘ Fool For Love is set in a seedy motel
room in the Mojave desert and plots the
resurgent relationship of former lovers who have become stranded there by late. Arnold picks out the show’s intensity as its primary attraction. ‘lt‘s about basic things like love and envy and betrayal’ he says ‘and it’s a very raw, stylised piece olthealre. The stage directions from Shepherd begin “This play is to be performed relentlessly without a break". And it is an exhausting piece of theatre. There are a few moments of quiet but then Bang, we're off again.‘
Andy Arnold is
convinced that the space under the Central Station can be turned into one of the most atmospheric theatres in town, in spite of the constant rumble of the Inter-Cities overhead. ‘You learn how a space works in favour of certain things and this theatre has an advantage when it comes to very emotional, intense theatre because
Oeirdrie Davies and Benny Young in Sam Shepard‘s Fool ForLove you’re so close to the actors. And when it’s full of people and the lights are on, it gets really hot. In lots of Scottish
; theatres you can‘t exactly create a
Californian desert motel room but I think you can here.
‘I think the audience end up shattered and that's what live theatre should be about— drawing in an audience and exhausting them. There are a lot of theatre shows where the audience are just watching a visual spectacle; they may as well be watching a film. This will not be like that but it’s a good evening. It’s not like an hour and fifteen minutes of pain and misery.’ (Philip Parr)
Fool For Love will be at The Arches
| Theatre, Glasgowfrom Thursday
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3—Sunday 20 October.
Beg to der
Wendy Seagerin Pen Name Theatre Company‘s recentproduction of Liz Lochhead‘s Blood and Ice
New thinking has been shunned by Pen Name Theatre in its production of The Beggar’s Opera. Thus, updated versions of Gay’s satire on the London Ufldefworld. are denied
any bearing on what
director David McVicar believes to be an incomparable original.
Apart from unavoidable cuts — 70 songs reduced to 44 — the show is presented laithtully.
McVicar suggests that the
show‘s parallels to contemporary society do not need to be made explicit. ’That is what is so exciting about it. The social satire is still so biting and relevant that as long as you’re playing
with truth and sincerity you don't need ,
to patronise your audience by suggesting they won’t understand it.’
It’s a production which emphasises ] extensive tour. See Touring for details. I
The List 37 September lll()th)l‘Cl l‘Nl 49
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the comic, employing parody in both the performances and set design. ‘lt’s got to be lun‘, explains McVicar. ‘lt’s not farce, it’s human comedy. The production is lull of little jokes which
: not everyone is going to get, but it provides a firm raft for the show to float
upon’. It’s also very theatrical, which is
i appropriate for a play in which a cast of six actors and two musicians play 27
~ characters. With logistics like this, it
: must have been hell to produce.
McVicar admits that it has been. ‘Everyone has been working every minute of the day—we're all exhausted.’
McVicar deflects any criticism that his choice of putting on a 250-year-old play is uninspired, claiming that new
theatre has little to offer which classics
can't match. Everything I ever want to say has already been written.’ And he has no
l l l
truck with “stupid wanky directors‘ who
think their ideas are more interesting than the human experience that takes place between a show and its audience. ‘I may come to the stage with lots of grandiose ideas. but I’m prepared to throw them all out it I find they don‘twork l’m important, but not that important.‘ (Aaron Hicklin)
The Beggars Opera will be at The Cumbernauld Theatre until Saturday 28 September before commencing an