THEATRE | PREVIEWS
FESTIVAL TAKE ME SOMEWHERE 2019 Various venues, Glasgow and beyond, Sat 11 May–Sun 2 Jun
Created in response to the closure of Glasgow’s Arches in 2015, Take Me Somewhere extends the legacy of alternative performance traditions in its third annual incarnation, spreading across multiple venues to remind Scotland that other visions are not only available but vibrant and crucial to the health of the arts and society. Leading with an ‘Afro-Futurist performance party’ (Brownton
Abbey, pictured, a celebration of intersectional artists promoting the sanctity of art), a Fringe-busting autobiographical analysis of abuse and gendered violence (Cock, Cock . . . who’s there) and a critique of pop culture inspired by Grace Jones’ exhilarating gigs (100% Pop), TMS is a reminder that performance not only reflects the cultures that inspire it, but presents new ways of thinking and being and considering them. ‘We like to think of it as a festival of “journeys”, encouraging us to move physically through the city and beyond,’ explains artistic director LJ Findlay-Walsh, ‘from Tramway’s iconic main stage, to gardens, urban back alleys and mountain ranges, from libraries to nightclubs, from gothic churches to disused post office buildings. Across the festival, the multitude of artists provide a sense of the scope of modern live art, a genre that does defy boundaries and definitions, even by its own shifting and fluid definition.’
Although the contemporary performance practice that is at the heart of the curation can seem daunting, TMS demonstrates the flexibility and inclusivity at its core: as likely to be a party or gig as a scripted play or familiar choreography, TMS celebrates diversity and conversation, an explicit statement of the possibilities of joining together in a public space: as Findlay- Walsh concludes, ‘it’s a coming-together, a celebration that allows us to consider, know, see and feel our present moment, informing how we move toward our future.’ (Gareth K Vile)
POETIC THEATRE DRONE Tron Theatre, Glasgow, Thu 11–Sat 13 Apr; Tue 4 & Wed 5 Jun, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh; and touring
Encasing Harry Josephine Giles’ poetry within Jamie Wardrop’s striking videography and a menacing soundscape from Neil Simpson, Drone sits comfortably within the emerging movement of spoken word artists expanding their performances into a more immersive, comprehensive theatrical experience. ‘Drone is about what it might feel like to be a military drone, who is also an office worker, who is also me,’ Giles explains. ‘I began writing it when I was doing work I didn't fully believe in that was even more complicit in enormous flows of global capital than I am now, and I began writing it when I hadn't fully admitted I was trans and, as we say, had Shit To Work Out.’
Despite the confronting content, Drone is more a subtle challenging of accepted ideas than a raw political commentary. ‘Political is so trendy,’ Giles continues. ‘There's nothing you can say that's radical enough to make people stop giving you money: you'd have to actually kill someone.’ The titular drone, however, is implicated in the system - ‘anxious, angry, broken, bad, responsible and failing, part human, part machine and all horror, she wants to change the world for the better.’ Uncompromising, intelligent and harnessing the power of technology, Drone is aimed at the heart and the head. (Gareth K Vile)
108 THE LIST 1 Apr–31 May 2019
POLITICAL THEATRE KITH Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh, Wed 3–Sat 6 Apr
Kith, the latest production from Adam Gordon, is, he explains ‘about a young man called Dani, the son of a woman who fled conflict in the Balkans and ended up in Scotland. But she has kept her story from him, told him nothing of her past. Dani doesn’t feel he belongs anywhere, and when his mother dies, his sense of self goes into free-fall, and he has to embark on an odyssey to find out who he is and where he belongs.’
Themes of migration and identity are certainly contemporary, but Gordon doesn’t necessarily see Kith as an attempt to explore a set of ideas. ‘I’m not sure it’s about “discussion”: stories are experiential, not intellectual, and story takes over where intellect fails. To tell the story of a person in ways that reach us emotionally, viscerally – that’s how you open up someone’s point of view.’ ‘When people look back, I believe that the story of our century will be one of displacement,’ Gordon continues. ‘Kith,in its original sense, refers not to family but to the land where you grew up, in a time when farming, hunting and foraging meant that you were much more intimately bound to it. Climate change, war and globalisation are rewriting that story in ways we don’t understand yet.’
Gordon adds: ‘ I hope that Kith is poignant, and the root of that word is poignarder, the French for ‘to stab’. So, I hope it’s a stab in the gut, visceral and beautiful. Ideas come later.’ (Gareth K Vile)