When Theatre Uncut was
awarded a Bank of Scotland Herald Angel Award during this year's
Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it was vindication for a radical idea
borne from adversity. Theatre Uncut''s three programmes of brand new
plays were performed script-in-hand in the Traverse Theatre bar at
ten in the morning. Many of the plays had been penned just a few days
before by an array of international writers, and were performed by a
top-notch cast pulled together from other Fringe shows with only a
couple of hours rehearsal.
The plays themselves
were akin to living newspapers, responding to current events with a
sense of immediacy that mattered more than any rough edges there
might have been. There weren't many. Nor were the plays old-fashioned
polemics, but offered up instead a more lateral set of responses
which retained a very human and poetic heart amongst the seriousness
of their concerns.
The new works ranged
from a piece by American playwright Neil LaBute that looked at the
relationship between a father and his Occupy protester son, to David
Greig's hot off the press reaction to the release from prison and
subsequent re-arrest of the Naked Rambler. In-between these came
Kieran Hurley's timely response to Olympic Games fever, as well as
new works by writers from Greece, Syria, Spain and Iceland.
One of the most moving
plays in the Theatre Uncut programme was Spine, Clara Brennan's look
at the effect of library closures as well as the power of words.
Brennan's monologue seemed to characterise the spirit of an idea
which began as a conversation around a kitchen table between director
Hannah Price and playwright Mark Ravenhill.
“It was October 2010,
and the UK coalition government had just announced their cuts in
public spending,” explains Theatre Uncut co-director Emma
Callander. “As theatre-makers, Hannah and Mark wanted to respond to
what was going on somehow, but weren't sure how.”
Out of this came a set
of plays that were performed during the first Theatre Uncut in 2011.
This programme of eight short pieces included works by Ravenhill,
Dennis Kelly and a piece by David Greig called Fragile, which cast
the audience as a mental health worker attempting to soothe one of
her clients.
“It felt very vital,”
says Callander. “Not just because of the plays, which were
brilliant, but because of the way they were done. By saying that
anyone could download the plays for free and do them anywhere, there
were eighty-nine performances happening all over the UK, and this
allowed people to talk about the effect of the spending cuts through
theatre.”
Following this year's
showcase at the Traverse, this second edition of Theatre Uncut has
gone global, with some 187 groups already signed up to perform the
plays. These include a group led by a drama teacher from Japan who
saw the plays in Edinburgh, and will now be overseeing a production
with her students taking place on a Japanese air base.
“Something like that
could only have come out of the Edinburgh Festival,” says
Callendar.
As she talks, Callander
is taking a break from rehearsing Greig's Naked Rambler play for the
Young Vic with leading Scottish actress, Lesley Hart. In Scotland
itself, the Traverse will again take the lead, with performances of
five of the plays this Wednesday night, including Kieran Hurley's
London 2012. Scots/Swedish company Creative Electric will present
five Theatre Uncut plays at the Bongo Club, also in Edinburgh, next
Sunday night, while this Wednesday there will be afternoon
performances at the Central Halls. In Glasgow, the Tron Young Theatre
company, Glasgow University Drama Society and former students of the
Royal Conservatoire will give their interpretations of some of the
plays. There will also be performances in Perth, Aberdeenshire and
North Berwick.
“There's a real
hunger for political theatre now in a way that there wasn't a couple
of years ago, when it was almost a dirty word,” says Callander. “I
think having a government you're in opposition to can be a really
creative thing, but Theatre Uncut can only exist as long as it's
needed. There's no vanity involved in it, but as long as something
needs to be questioned, we'll question it through Theatre Uncut. If
not, Theatre Uncut won't exist. Imagine that, a perfect world without
any public spending cuts...Listen to me, wishing our theatre away.”
Theatre Uncut 2012 will
take place between November 12th-18th. A full map of
performances across the world can be found at
https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=204655771753689489168.0004cb08515d961b37d1b&msa=0&ll=56.005676,-3.188095&spn=0.149725,0.589828
The Herald, November 13th 2012
ends
Comments