I’m back, and after many months of what can accurately be described as “crap” I’m starting to be creative again – I’m even properly starting on a new project (although The Failure Project may rear it’s ugly head once or twice again in the future).
This is largely due to the fact that I am now gainfully employed, and even better, in an environment that stimulates me – in a theatre company that, as well as producing new writing, also has a strong and very inspiring education programme. And even though I don’t get to play any creative role within this company, just being around people who are passionate about theatre as I am is good enough for me right now. AND of course, now that I have a job, I have money – not much, but enough to start hiring out proper rehearsal space and not revert to the ridiculous situation of rehearsing physical performance work in my bedroom.
SO…now that everything’s “coming up Milhouse” I’m filling my boots with as many trips to the theatre as I can manage (God bless the free tickets for under 26s scheme). The shinning moments among my visits was, undoubtedly, The Author, on now at the Royal Court…I managed to catch a rehearsal of the piece and was completely blown away by it. This is the type of theatre I look for and seem to so rarely find – brave, immediate, theatre that really questions the act and process of creating and viewing theatre, how and why we do it, without descending into cold irony. It is honest, human and open. The feeling of tension amongst the audience was quite unlike anything I’ve ever felt when watching theatre – as well as feeling uncomfortable, I felt invigorated by it.
I also went back to the Central School of Speech and Drama to see what the current students of my old MA course were up to, in the Festival Of… which they are holding this month. I’ve seen two pieces so far and am going back next week to see another too; so far, the work is playful, explorative, and truly experimental…not in that way people mean whenever something unconventional is onstage, but in the true sense of the word – actually trying out stuff to see what happens in the hope of discovering something new rather than just reaffirming old prejudices.
Other things didn’t light my fires so much – I spent a day watching shows at the Decibel showcase in Manchester (my first time in Manchester! Very exciting) and although I admire the emphasis on diversity in the theatre, which is of course important, some of the shows were downright awful. And really, there’s no excuse – it doesn’t matter what agenda you’re pushing; the content of your work still has to be worth something or there’s no point. I also saw Punk Rock at the lyric and though I found it enjoyable, and the cast very talented, I wasn’t sure I understood why it was there – for anyone that has seen it, seriously, why? It didn’t seem to be saying anything particularly new to be about the ‘youth experience’ (not to me anyway) and some of the dialogue was just too eloquent and quick-fire to be coming from anyone, let alone a bunch of insecure teenagers. The climax (I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it) seemed a bit far-fetched, even with the build-up beforehand. But, everyone else loved it, so…
Having talked about new things in my life, it’s a little bit strange, and regressive, to get back to talking about the Failure Project, but the topic has been propelled into my mind by a fascinating dialogue on another blog.
Chris Goode is someone I admire greatly; having first come across him as a poet, reading/performing his work at Sussex University where I studied, I’ve been hooked. I’ve since come to learn about his theatre work and his blog has become essential reading for me: intelligent, insightful and passionate.
Anyhoo, he wrote a post on his blog a while ago which happened to be about failure in performance, and was critical about companies and artists that acknowledge failure within their work. I don’t want to paraphrase and get it wrong, so here is a chunk of it:
“...All of us who work in theatre get asked the same question over and over: Why on earth would you work in such a medium? It turns out a lot of practitioners don't have an answer to that question, and so they embed it self-regardingly in their work. Even companies I really like and admire -- Apocryphal comes to mind -- fold into their work a kind of pre-emptive admittance of failure and absurdity. This is more or less what intellectual practice in theatre now means (part of the large shadow cast by Forced Ents): a kind of (supposedly) candid despair at the preposterousness of the theatrical response to the world around it. In terms of the experience of individual makers, there may be a certain honesty in the presentation of that despair; but in terms of the wider culture, it seems to me sort of unscrupulous in its insistence that no more than this can be done. There is something kind of tyrannical about its narcissistic pessimism. Every criticism made of it is already located somewhere in the piece or in the expectations of the people making it. When people behave like this, it looks a lot like childish sulking.”
A resulting conversation between Chris and Julia Lee Barclay from Apocryphal which has now been posted on the blog has made me question again the processes and meaning behind my work. Before I launch into it I should mention that Chris has not seen The Failure Project and does not, to my knowledge, follow this blog (although he did comment once on a video I had posted). So what I’m writing isn’t a straight up response to him, as what he wrote was not about me in the first place – I’m just trying to figure out what it might mean for my work.
It may seem a little strange for someone whose blog is called ‘The Failure Project’ to argue that failure is not the focal point of their work. I’ve often come across problems because of the title of the work: people hear “the failure project” a make a number of assumptions, many of which are untrue. It’s my fault, I picked a title that is obviously misleading (I know I can’t pick titles for toffee). Let me address some of these assumptions:
- That when I’m talking about failure I’m talking about a subjective idea of whether something (whether it be a character, a text, a scene or an entire piece) ‘worked’ or not. Back when I was looking into clowning as a possible link to the project I interviewed someone who was well-versed in the form: he couldn’t seem to understand that I wasn’t talking about scenes that were rubbish or that the audience didn’t like and straight away I knew I had a problem. What would be the point of putting something deliberately rubbish on stage? To confirm what exactly: that audiences don’t like bad theatre? What a surprise that would be. And how could you be sure that everyone would agree with your opinion anyway? I mean, look what happened to the Producers. I needed to make sure that each failure, if they happened, could be clearly definable and located within the body and NOT within the aims of the piece as a whole – and that is because I wasn’t interested in the concept of failure as something to do with value judgements; not in my piece. I think it also places the work in a different context to meta-theatre pieces that are about “The preposterousness of the theatrical response to the world around it” (another Chris Goode quotation).
- That the point is to fail. A few people thought that the performers were failing on purpose on stage. AHHH! It makes me sad to hear that, as it means they will have viewed the piece from a completely different starting point to the one that was intended. The integrity of the project rested upon the fact that the performers could NOT fail intentionally, and that they could not WANT to fail in order to further the piece. The personal nature of the devising process was key to this – by developing tasks that deliberately pushed the individual buttons of each performer, a sense that something real and important to each performer was at stake became present– ‘I can’t fail this – this means something more to me’. What then became the focal point, and the real purpose of the piece, was the process that each performer goes through – their attempts not to fail their task and all the emotions and elements of their real personalities that leak through when in their unguarded state. The physical leads into the emotional. What was nice was that it made the occasional moments of success all the more sweet – you can’t help but feel for the performers and will them to succeed.
(As a side note, it’s funny that some audience members simply cannot believe that something is not pre-planned or that it is improvisational, even if you tell them it is.)
- That I’m only interested in the failure itself – I hope it’s clear from the first two points that this is not the case. I’m interested in everything that comes with failure - as something that drives performers and all people – the fear of failing, the struggle against failing, and the outcomes when you do or don’t fail (which can be humorous, sad, uncomfortable…a million different things, as many different outcomes as there are human responses). THIS is what is fascinating to me, because it touches upon what to me is the single most powerful and important element of theatre, and the reason why I create it – its liveness. You get to see, if only in fleeting moments, the real people behind the performers. You get to see moments that have not been pre-planned and that are not intended, but must be dealt with directly. As a spectator, you become a part of something that implicates you also; for you are seeing these moments of revelation and struggle, these moments that just happen, and you must decide, as a witness to it, what part you’re playing in it and how to respond, too. This is live, and it makes me feel the true liveness and immediacy of theatre.
More difficult to argue against is the argument by Chris that the allowance of failure in work “minimises the harm that those moments of 'failure' or self-conscious lapse actually do to the activity of the work.” It’s true. I hope that in ‘The Failure Project’ the personal nature of the tasks has raised the stakes somewhat and tried to make up for this, but I won’t have made up for it entirely. And I guess that’s the failure of the project. It’s an unavoidable paradox of the piece: The performers may not be OK with failing, but the piece is.
I guess that’s enough rambling: it’s almost three o’ clock in the morning and this all seems like old news anyway. I will move on to the new project now, I promise!
