You’ll need your passport for Grid lron’s new show, Roam, at Edinburgh Airport. In it, you’ll be taken on a journey airside and landside. Talking to its director Ben Harrison sets Steve Cramer thinking about the cultural meaning of airports themselves.
irports: universal places of transition.
where no one is at home. They are the
only places where we are always intent upon another place. Robert Louis Stevenson‘s sentiment. that ‘to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive‘ might be something we can all relate to. but it doesn’t mean that travel is any great pleasure in itself. Airports were once places of mystical glamour. but the expansion of air travel has put paid to that.
These days. we are surrounded by consumerism at these places: the only recourse from bouts of boredom and stress is to eat in those fast food restaurants of the low to middle market kind. Lumber yourself. if so inclined. with electrical goods to impede the rest of your journey. or endure. as you nervously await your flight. the medieval rack that is Tie Rack. You won't be happy until you‘re in the air.
Yet this stage of your journey is perhaps the most important to the bureaucracy that maintains a spurious class and race-based order in our society. In no place are you so placed under surveillance as here. No doubt the sense of fear which is instilled in us by these places. the constant announcements that an abandoned suitcase could be a bomb. the policemen with guns. the strict regimentation of airside and landside. is a gratifying thought to those who control our society. It appeals to what the great theatrical thinker Augusto Boal called ‘the cop in the head'. We begin to fear. not surveillance itself. but the lack of it. seeking the supervision of higher authorities in a way that the same folk couldn‘t dream of were you at home. And it is an unnatural state for humans.
But then. so is air travel. I've always attributed the ease with which one can alight a plane and travel through customs at the end of one‘s journey to the fact that by the time you've endured a long haul. you actually look like your passport photo. Mind you. there are exceptions to the end ofjourney theory. When I travel back to my native Australia. these days on my remaining passport. the British one afforded by my parents‘ nationality. I often encounter worse delays than anywhere else. Paradoxically. my passport renders me an EC ‘alien' in my own country.
Yet passports are meant to be the surest guarantee of a person's identity there is. It is a very recent development that we are forced to travel with one. Indeed. it was only lent anything like legal status after World War ll. when in their haste to hang William Joyce. better known as Lord Haw Haw. the Nazi broadcaster. the British government lit upon the fact that many years before he had travelled on a British passport as proof of treason to Britain. This all created a legal precedent we‘ve had to wear ever since.
But for all the loss of identity which passports impose. they are as nothing to the dumbed down and bland atmosphere of the airport itself. which. through its arduous mazes of consumer culture. can cause the utter dissolution of our individuality. There are even
far more aspirational versions of the shops and eateries I mentioned above. designer shops and classin named franchises. Each competes for your engagement in their ‘lifestyle' projects.
Yet through all this. the very fact of being with other people. even through the dehumanising process of air travel. seems to instill an empathy in Us we can‘t always find in our usual lives. Don't you too watch the people around you and imagine theirjourneys. and the lives they‘ve led to take them? The stressed business man in the freshly crumpled suit. the mother struggling to control over-excited children — all inspire curiosity and sympathy.
We run from our problems. often overseas. But we can’t hide. for the new place we need to travel to is in our minds. ‘Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.’ as Amelia Earhart once remarked. yet we continue to follow her onto planes. leaving many who still love us behind for the one person who no longer feels this way.
Worst of all. the glamour is gone from air travel. When I was at primary school. the girls all wanted to be air stewardesses. Could it ever be so vivacious a cultural image again? ‘Yes.' Ben Harrison. co-artistic director of Grid Iron. assures me. ‘lt's why pilots are so sexy. Everyone looks at pilots. because they know
how to fly the thing. We want. in the era of
Ryanair and Easyjet. to restore some of the glamour to flying. I love going to Heathrow. and seeing the hundreds of airlines. and the incredible costumes and headgear of the stewardesses from faraway places — there’s still a kind of glamour there.'
I‘m reflecting upon this as I view director Ben Harrison across a table at the Traverse bar.
Since its inception, Grid Iron has developed a portfolio of brilliant promenade productions. Steve Cramerlooksatsomeofthehighlights.
The Bloody Chamber Grid lron's history began over a decade ago with this startling adaptation of Angela Carter's atmospheric fairytale of gender and identity, performed in the dark dungeons beneath Edinburgh‘s Royal Mile.
Gargantua This testament to eating and appetite. performed in Edinburgh's Underbelly when it was still a bunch of empty caverns under the city library, was the hottest show on the Fringe. The physical style and playful tone of the piece defined Grid lron's house style for years to come.
The Devil's Larder The last Grid Iron show. debuting at Debenham’s department store after a stint in a morgue in Cork. was a splendid realisation of Jim Grace's book.
ROAM
He sits. staring at me through his spectacles with the wide eyes that I came to know well over a decade ago at Edinburgh University. as a nervous young tutor to Harrison‘s accomplished student. He. along with the other co-founder of Grid lron theatre company Judith Docherty. in another of my classes in the same year. was the kind of student who could do brilliantly without my help. Now a thirtysomething. his slim-faced boyish features seem not to have altered a jot. and nor the youthful enthusiasm of his discourse when opening up about a show.
And what a show it looks. Grid Iron. a site- specific company of uncommon quality. are presenting what must surely be a highlight of this year's National Theatre of Scotland programme. In it. we travel out to Edinburgh airport for a show about air travel and all its ramifications. You‘ll need your passport to get in. though. for as part of the journey. you'll be going airside.
There‘ll be a kind of fun and playfulness about this piece. But. in a journey which involves a cast from places as far afield as the Middle East. South America and Eastern Europe. there’ll also be a more substantial political edge to this piece than any previous Grid Iron production. ‘lt‘s the most political show Grid Iron has ever done. by a thousand miles.‘ says Harrison. ‘lt touches on refugee issues. asylum seekers. the Middle East conflict. what I see as the political hinge of the world at the moment. the dispute between Israel and Palestine. We play with that. but try to avoid being soapboxy about it. This idea of people travelling around airports and how they are judged on appearance is also important. We have a sign that says. “Please Shave off Your Beard Before Proceeding“. There‘s a theatricality to beards.’
Harrison acknowledges the influence of the great Palestinian thinker Edward Said in his devising of the show. The late Said was a leading dissenter from US foreign policy over the decades. his idea of ‘Orientalism’. the manner in which we in the West render alien the people of the third world through our representation of them. in order to dehurnanise people we can then. in good conscience. dominate. But there is also a more relaxed and philosophical aspect to the show. as evinced by Harrison’s references to Alain de Botton. ‘He wrote this terrific book called The Art of Travel. where he says travel is a kind of mindset. He talks about going to airports and just looking at the monitors flicking through their destinations. He thinks. well. I can go to Bogota. Dubai, or Tokyo. if I had enough money and my passport 1 could go.’ This certainly seems less stressful than actually having to board the plane.
Edinburgh International Airport, Tue 4-Sat 22 Apr (ticket holders must depart from Traverse Theatre, 8.30pm). Pro-booking essential, 0131 228 1404, traverse.co.uk
30 Mar-13 Apr 2006 1’". LIST 21