PHILIP HOWARD
as a response to changing times. But this has been a program that we started planning two years ago. It’s taken two years to raise the extra money to do it. It‘s a more medium term response than something immediate.‘
()n the presentation of three new plays. to be worked in repertory by the same four actors. a colossal task presents itself for director Lorne Campbell (pictured below) but with a recent precedent for success in the Citizens‘ Little Bit of Ruff season a couple of years back. there’s also reason for optimism.
Again. Howard points tip the practicality of such a project: ‘We have a remit. in the new building to produce new work. but also there’s a pressure for these to be big totemic shows. which. while they won‘t always have big sets. always have big production values. This is a way of saying we‘re still committed to that. but of getting rougher work in front of audiences. because we can't keep saying to our writers. "Listen. until you write the perfect play. when we‘ll give you a full production. until then. we‘re going to keep you on the back burner." So getting this work on is actually a way of fulfilling a pretty unsexy. pragmatic brief.‘
As to his critics. Howard is candid about the recent history of the Traverse. ‘Whichever period people might have picked out as a golden age of playwriting. might not have been as good as everyone said it was. Similarly. I think the plays we‘ve done over the past eighteen months that have received criticism in some quarters. were not as bad as they've been made out to be. I do understand that commentators have the job of monitoring these developments and interpreting cycles. and I can't grudge the fact that people feel this way. because I didn‘t say to them. when they were raving about the work for eight years on the trot. “Well you're talking rubbish because it‘s not that good.“ I don't resent it when things don't go our way.‘
What clearly emerges from the conversation is I-loward’s desire to expand the vocabulary of what is called new writing. ‘lt‘s important to us to show that writing is not just that picture of the artist in the garret with the leaky radiator and fevered imagination. it’s about accepting that
18 THE LIST 1‘.) Oct—2 Nov 2006
The cast of Tilt in rehearsal
writing is produced in many different ways.‘ (‘uhctl is bound to attract admirers of alternative forms of theatre. but Iloward. as ever. diverges a little frotn the stock call fora youthful audience. and seems to suggest something more radical. ‘Because people are terrified of using the word "class". they often mistake the youth thing for a class thing. I’m much more interested in getting people who are
‘WRITING IS NOT JUST THAT PICTURE OF THE ARTIST IN THE GARRET WITH THE LEAKY RADIATOR AND FEVERED IMAGINATION'
not put off by ticket prices or the shape of the theatre to come. Maybe there‘s a role for capturing that underground market. But I think it‘s less about those sorts of audiences than simply doing other kinds of work. We have to be artist led and this is about being more diverse. and the work continuing to enrich itself.‘
Traverse Cubed starts on Sun 29 Oct
MUSIC
Recognising the key role of music in so much contemporary theatre. a group of theatre musicians have set out to create a new way of looking at both. The members of this group are all experienced in making music for the theatre. but sought means of escaping the usual pattern, where a director commissions a musician to provide sounds for a show effectively after the fact. where the music must conform to the show. With the work of such outfits as 7hings. this process is reversed.
‘We've always thought of theatre as having a musical structure. What I mean is. I've always applied ideas like counterpoint. a musical structure to dramatic scenes. There is a parallel there. There are also ideas like tempo which is so important to theatre. So we've always started with the musical element in a theatre piece rather than narrative.‘
TILT
For fans of the more conventional idea of new writing. this presentation of three short plays might be the ticket. But even here. the Traverse's usual house rules have gone out the window. The three pieces will be presented in repertory using the same three actors (in one case there‘ll be a fourth) to present them in double and triple bills. The monumental task of directing all three has been placed in the hands of Lorne Campbell. who seems truly exhilarated by the prospect.
One of the plays. Morna Pearson's Distracted has. before it has received a full staging. already been the recipient of an award. in the shape of the Rod Hall prize. a gong presented to young writers jointly by the late Mr Hall‘s agency and English company Paines Plough. It tells the stOry of an autistic boy living on a Morayshire trailer park. whose fantasies are projected onto his fellow residents. and seem increasingly to blur the borderlines between imagination and reality. Meanwhile lain F MacLeod’s version of French writer David Lescot's play. Broke tells the story of a bankrupt man and his state-appointed liquidator. The third piece is David Priestley‘s White Point. a play dealing with the discontents and glass ceilings facing folk in their late 208. set in a shared flat.
The whole experience of the three plays is recommended by Campbell. ‘By doing these plays with four actors. you're always seeing a play in the context of another play. you're putting the actors at the centre of it; it gives the writers a feeling that they‘re always supported by something.‘ he says. 'These are all plays with narratives. all plays with laughs; if we get it right you should be able to sit down and enjoy. They deal with heavy subjects. they're all plays about leaving and being left. they're all plays about how we seek happiness. and they‘re all plays about transition and the need to change. But they're all very entertaining. And the longest is only an hour and five minutes.‘
explains Gerard Mclnulty, from Twelve Star. the leading commissioned piece of music theatre in Cubed, and another aspect of the music side of the festival.
There is definitely a performance in the offing here. rather than a gig. but the music is the real star. ‘This gives you the freedom to change more as y0u go along, it gives you a psychological freedom. You can do anything with music in a theatrical production. It's like the soundtrack to the Gus Van Sant film E/ephant. where there‘s a scene with a bunch of students walking down the corridor. pretty ordinary. but the sound. which mixes Beethoven. with the sound of a basketball. and station announcements and other stuff makes it ambiguous and alarming.’ Expect more of a felt experience of narrative rather than a conventional story. and you won't be disappointed.
John Hard!