THEATRE PREVIEW
llllE ART l DOUBLE VISION I
image-conscious: Roy Faudree comes face-to-face , with himself in Dupe '
Never go to lunch with ! L'S performance art stalwart. Roy l-‘audrce. Traces of com ersaiion had while munching may end up filtering through to his next show. Dupe. currently winging its way to Glasgow. takes as its subject a man in the grip of mid-life. crisis. "The character is based on a Hollywood actor I ; happened to be at lunch with. He was having all these problems with his public and personal life. When I got home l wrote down as much of it as I could remember.‘
Several years later. Faudree and the Massachusetts based No Theatre collective were seeking out text for a new show. and the long i forgotten lunch-guest ' jumped back into the frame. Joining forces with Chris Kondek — the t techno-wizard behind Laurie Anderson‘s latest multi-media fest Nerve Bible ~ No Theatre brainstormed their way towards [)upe.
The resulting one~man show is a heady cocktail l of video imagery. audio inserts and live i perfomiance. with Faudree centre-stage. His character. considerably re- invented. has become a cocaine-fuelled wn’ter battling with the last draft of his screenplay in a jumbled-up. wired—up world. Flanked on all sides by his own creations on tape and screen. his real life becomes increasingly confused i with invention.
Hi-tech and high- density. Dupe is typical of the kind of work that's earned Faudree (also a member of New York's radical Wooster Group) and his colleagues the American ‘expen'mental theater' tag. ‘Labels can be dangerous.‘ says Faudree. ‘but that‘s one term l‘ve really grown to
like. Movies and theatre have become so formulaic. lfexperimental is the opposite of that.
t l i l l
CONTEMPORARY OANGE
Travel show
i
Girls on the edge: lncognita in Frontier
Edinburgh-based dance duo lncognita ; are hatching a plan. Last seen tearing
round cellars and rooftops at the
Demarco Art Foundation with the ‘ spectacular promenade piece
Spectator Sport, their latest ambition is to tear round Europe, in a
customised tour bus that folds out into ;
a performance space. The idea would
. be to link the twin cities of Edinburgh
and Munich, Florence and Kiev with a series of shows that would gather ‘information’ from each place they visit and carry it forward to the next city, and the next performance. Unfortunately, the cash for this project - known as Charabanc - has
not been flowing as freely as hoped.
For now, the bus stays on the drawing board and the European tour -
‘ originally planned for July of this year
—- is now pencilled in for July 1996. flot
KENNY ill-IAN
é ones to be deterred by lack of the folding stuff, lncognita - a.k.a. Dawn Hartley and Brigid McCarthy — have
tour theme, they’ve invented a ‘mini- tour’ of Edinburgh called Frontierto be performed in such unexpected spaces as the root of Waverley Market, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and Portobello Beach.
McCarthy. ‘We were hoping to join up ; all these cities, but when we didn’t get the money we needed to do that
; place at a time, starting with our own I city.’
The strategy behind the Edinburgh
performances has been to create raw
, dance material in the studio and see a how it’s affected when placed in its chosen enviroment. ‘When you go into I a theatre, you see everything very straight on,’ says McCarthy. ‘We’re
' seeing things from a different
2 perspective. At the Portrait Gallery the
audience will be looking down on us, at the beach they’ll be further back and spread out, and at the Waverley Centre they’ll be looking up at us with
thrown together a small triumph in the face of adversity. Carrying through the
‘Charabanc is still alive in spirit,’ says
; immediately we thought we’d take one
I, comeov CLUBS
Go ahead, in.
2
Surely you jest: Ribtickler founders Ian Kendall
and Mitch Benn
. llcomcdy is the new rock 'n‘ roll. then
it’s only proper that its dinosaurs be
periodically swept away by a punk- ' style revolution. There are differences
trying to shift that so the audience are
though: three chords can be endlessly recycled into ragged thrash pop. btit you need more than three decentjokes
to whip tip a comedy audience. And laughter"s a more complex activity than
that marvellous backdrop. It’s a way of getting people to look at dance from a 1 sustain a rnirthful atmosphere in a
venue this size. you need enough
different angle than the one they’re
used to.’ (Ellie Carr)
. Introduction to Frontier, Incognita, Dance Base, Tue 4 July, 2pm; Frontier, Wed 5—Fri 7 July: see Dance listings for details.
; From the ; vault
Seventies-style sex is back in style at
Glasgow’s Arches Theatre - the huge ; Victorian vaults supporting Central 3 Station, whose trains rumble overhead
like clockwork thunder. Artistic
director Andy Arnold is reviving David
Mamet’s Sexual Perversity in Chicago, the first play produced by the resident
- company that emerged here in 1991.
‘After the Glasgow’s Glasgow
f exhibition closed in 1900, this place
nearly ended up on a bonfire,’ recalls g Arnold, ‘but one casting vote on a
Council committee let us hold onto the ' theatre seats.’
Thirty in-house productions later — from Brian Friel’s Freedom of the City to The Partfck Thistle Story - Arnold
insists they’ve only just begun. ‘We’ve opened a second theatre space, the
' Crucible Arch, and The Face magazine
voted Cafe Loco the best in Glasgow.
We must be the only theatre in Britain where nightclubs help fund serious
I theatre, because we are totally
i unsubsidlsed. We’re kept going by a
combination of emotional blackmail and raw enthusiasm, and we’re still only dabbling in terms of this
. building’s potential.’ The nightclub
Swingin' into action: the Arches Theatre Company
Arnold says Caligariwill be along , similar lines to the company’s chilling : version of Metropolis. ‘lt’s set in a circus tent and a lunatic asylum. This Z isn’t the place to do The Boyfriend or Noel Coward,’ he adds, referring to the 3' building’s haunting atmosphere. f looking back at the highlights, he i cites Tony Harrison’s V. ‘I did it with I an unemployed group who’d never acted before. We devised a bit of ’: theatricality for each of the 114 verses. It’s often the ones like that i rather than the big hits that stay with l you.’
Returning to the forthcoming revival, I ask him why, mumbling about : Mamet’s recent overexposure. ‘I think ’ Glasgow actors have a feel for it,’ he
says. ‘lt’s urban and sleazy and the language is so beautifully crisp that
actors love doing it.’
pogoing.
in Edinburgh. two youthful comedy outfits are addressing this challenge. The newer of the two. The Ribtiekler. happens on 'l’hursdays in the cavernous Music Box club. To generate and
punters to outnumber the performers at least ten to one. Long. hot. summer‘s
evening aside. four inexperienced
stand ups just don't have that kind of
pull. lan Kendall is an affable enough
comperc. and the three wannabes he introduced last week —— Graeme McMurdo. absolute beginner Bob
(‘ooney and (iordon Brunton -— all had
the basis of a routine. But all -— except promising Brunton - lack the skill to carry the good jokes through. and the judgement to dump the leaden ones. To
be fair. though. I‘d defy Lenny Henry
TONY .\'l(‘()l.li'lil'l
to establish much rolling rapport with an audience as few and far between.
By contrast. the intimate studio at
3 Stepping Stones is exactly the right venue for this kind of venture. Dallas
and Packer. w ho've been running and competing the Comedy Stop on Friday
' and Saturday nights for just over a year.
are not slow to grumble that the sunshine has robbed them ofa crowd. but in a space like this it's not so
devastating.
A firmer bedrock of experience helps
too. Dallas and l’acker are not what 3 you‘d call slick. bill they have some of the anarchic frenzy that makes Reeves
and Mortimer popular. a relaxed stage
1 presence and enough back-up material
I: to skate over the patches of thin ice. Their three guests last Friday -~ likeable redhead John lilint. bashfully filthy
I l-‘i fer James Donlan and sharnbolic
Geordie magician Reg Anderson —- tried
2 out their material in front of a small but
sympathetic crowd. It's not a series on
Channel 4. btrt it's a start.
Meanwhile in rock ‘n‘ roll land. most
l of punk's young bucks have , disappeared. but Page and Plant are back on tour. Draw your own
men yes. we“ -; connection, for example, has led to a
expedmenm (Ellie Can) t i collaboration with Soma Records, who will produce music for this autumn’s
Callgarl, an adaptation by Andrew
l Dallmeyer of the classic expressionist
movie.
‘ conclusions. (Andrew Burnet)
l The lv‘r'lnlr/r/er. The Music Box“. ’l‘lturxrlriys; 'I’lie ('mnerly Stop. Stepping : Stu/res. Fridays uml .S'rtrurrluys. Dallas
and Parker present it ('mrrerlv Orgy at
1 (lie l’leusmn‘e on Sat 8 July.
And those trains? Five years on, ' Arnold probably finds them musical. 1! (Ronan O’Donnell) 9 Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Arches ; Theatre Company, Tron Theatre, i Glasgow, Thurs 4—Sun 16 July.
Dupe, Roy Fuudree/No Theatre. C CA. Glasgow, Fri 7—Sar 8 July, 7.30pm.
55 The List 30 Jun- l 3 Jul 1995