sustained theatre

By Manick Govinda

Do you agree with agree with Manick Govinda's view that live art is more challenging than theatre ? Post your comments below.

When I was a student of literature in the early 80s, I wrote an essay on Wuthering Heights positing the idea that Heathcliff was not white, but probably of Gypsy/Romany background, with his origins going back to medieval India. The mysterious, dark, brooding other who infects the young Yorkshire girl Catherine Earnshaw with is wild and unrestrained energy and passion. I got a B minus as my lecturer thought I had too impressionistic a view on the book, and obviously didn’t approve of my reading of the text. It was a ground-breaking experimental non-linear novel for its time, imbued with gothic and supernatural presence.

So, my heart sank to read that Tamasha theatre company has “bollywoodised” the story, rendering it safe, untransgressive and sentimental, stripped of its darkness and uncomfortable exploration of a doomed mixed-race relationship. It made me realise why I have given up on a lot of theatre and took a journey to find new, adventurous and more challenging modes of performance. This journey took me to the ground-breaking territories of live art.

Live art broke all the rules of theatre and challenged conventional notions of fine art. It’s a fluid territory that cannot be pinned down into neat definitions. As Lois Keidan, director of the Live Art Development Agency says: "Live Art is a research engine, driven by artists who are working across forms, contexts and spaces to open up new artistic models, new languages for the representation of ideas and new strategies for intervening in the public sphere."

When it comes to politics, identity and social or audience engagement, live art explores complexity and multiplicity of meaning. This April, London was fortunate to be home to a powerful season of live art and experimental performance curated by artist Robert Pacitti. This was not a showcase of work, but a considered curation of the best of contemporary performance, and, like Heathcliff in rural 19th century Yorkshire, infecting and temporarily taking over the establishment.

The programme was peppered with the anti-theatre performances of artists like Robin Deacon, Harminder Singh Judge, Sheila Ghelani, Rajni Shah, Julie Tolentino, George Chakravarthi and Mem Morrison sitting equally alongside their national and international peers. But not once is the vacuous term “cultural diversity” mentioned, not once are these artists treated as the “other”, other than the context of being an “international festival of experimental theatre, live art and performance showcasing works of exceptional artists from around the world.”

Let’s pick out some of these works. Robin Deacon, who is an Artsadmin associate artist, created a work called Prototypes which showed at Soho Theatre. The work was inspired by his childhood and somewhat “geeky” obsession with Hornby model railways, and an “aunt” whom he used to visit who lived in Southall whose room overlooked the railways. The work examined the emasculated aging male, the struggle against biography and being odd. Deacon challenged his audiences by giving his role to his white father, who is not a professional performer or artist, but a retired school-teacher, who read out the text written by Deacon. Deacon was very much the technician – running from model train to model train, which gave a filmic representation of the view from his “aunts” window. The structure and tension was determined by a particular railway train timetable. The projection of the artist’s identity on to his narrating father, who dons an afro wig and “browns” himself up asks us look at how we live through memories and what the future holds for us. Is this it? Are we, like discontinued and decommissioned trains, left to rust in the graveyard of senility and geeky hobbies? There is no closure only more questions.

Harminder Singh Judge’s performance of The Modes of Al-Ikseer in the seedy, rat-infested cavernous labyrinthine railway arches of Shunt brings the interstices of a strong visual image Indian religious ascetic chic with the glitzy world of neon signage. Judge stands on a small rotating platform with a neon text sign hung around him, reading: “lift up the receiver and I’ll make you a believer”, a quote from Depeche Mode’s song “Personal Jesus”. The rotating platform, situated in the middle of a vast pool of milk, curdles and churns the milk. The semiotics of religion, pop music, advertising culture, and spirituality is fused into an explosive climax when two Punjabi dhol players enter the space into the milk and beat out a basic beat to the climactic soundscape seguing into the Depeche Mode song. Live sculpture, 80s electro-pop and striking visual imagery echoing contemporary advertising left me thinking about the some people’s attraction to religion – is it the spirituality (the signified) or is it the style, the fashion, the look, the sound (the signifiers) that draws us?

Finally, Pacitti Company’s Intermission at Soho Theatre, created by Robert Pacitti and Sheila Ghelani who performs the work echoes late Beckett verbal vomit of text Not I, as Ghelani frenetically performs a text and task based actions, between nine microphones and a continuous soundtrack. The work is a powerful layered and fragmented statement on the erosion of freedom, normative constraints, and the urge to kick against the one-dimensional functionality of being alive. It makes a forceful case for individuality and freedom.

Should you, like me, fancy taking a walk on the wild side of the conventional theatrical experience, there are many ways to begin. Check out the following publications, Documenting Live published by the Live Art Development Agency, Performing Difference published by Artsadmin; come to Everything you wanted to know about live art … at Queen Mary’s College in June.

Manick Govinda
Head of Artists’ Advisory Services & Artists’ Producer , Artsadmin

( The image at the top of this article is from Intermission by Pacitti Company)