Things
have changed since Kieran Hurley first began writing the play that would become
Mouthpiece, which opens at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh this weekend. At
the time, Hurley was, in his own words, “quite new on the scene.” As a writer
and performer, he had already scored hits with Beats and Chalk Farm, two pieces
that put him on the map with a new generation of theatre-makers steeped in an
equally new wave of grassroots opposition that drew from the iconography of
revolutions past. Where Beats looked at the politicisation of 1990s club
culture, Chalk Farm, co-written with AJ Taudevin, focused on a teenage boy
caught up in the 2011 London riots.
More
plays followed. Some, like Heads Up used the same solo story-telling aesthetic
to look at an everyday apocalypse. More recently, Square Go, written with Gary
McNair, dissected toxic masculinity through a school playground fight.
All
the while as Hurley developed as a writer, from new kid on the block to
established provocateur, this new play was growing with him, changing as he
changed. Stories were thrown away and both form and content were changed. The
result, seen in co-production with Hurley’s HighTide company, is a very different
play to how it started.
Set
initially on Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh, it brings together Declan, a teenage
boy from Pilton, and a middle-aged New Town woman Libby. Where Libby was once a
committed writer who has lost her mojo in the throes of a mid-life crisis,
Declan is a naturally gifted artist who, coming from the background he does,
would never dare define himself as such. The alliance that results sees Libby
embark on what might be seen as a form of cultural tourism in a play that asks
questions about access to artistic expression across a class divide. In a
Jekyll and Hyde city like Edinburgh, this becomes even more marked.
“It
was one of these things where much of the original idea ends up going in the
bin,” Hurley says regarding the roots of Mouthpiece. “It ended up going through
several different phases, and kept pushing me in different directions. In terms
of the play itself, I guess the original impulse came from me grappling with confusions
about class identity and class consciousness.
“I’d
written Beats and Chalk Farm, and they were about characters who felt innately
familiar to me, but at the same time I was working in the arts, which, at some
point, almost all of us are afforded access to that world through various forms
of privilege. There are shades of grey here, but it made me think about what
that meant to me as a writer and the stories I’m telling.
There’s
something about a legitimacy of voice, and about whose stories need to be told,
but there’s also something about who gets to tell those stories, and where that
line is drawn.”
Artists
from privileged backgrounds telling stories about the poor or disenfranchised
is far from a new thing. From Charles Dickens’ fictionalised portraits of
poverty-stricken London through to the very different films made respectively
by Mike Leigh and Ken Loach, the travails of the working classes at various
points in history have been portrayed with various shades of partisan artistry.
Even the late John McGrath’s work with 7:84, which used popular theatrical
forms to explore various forms of social and economic disenfranchisement, arguably
came from a place of privilege.
“This
is where it becomes complicated,” says Hurley. “It was really important that
Dickens was writing about poorhouses, but in a society where certain people are
excluded from certain worlds, it’s also really important that they tell their
stories. At the same time, writing Mouthpiece has been part of exploring my own
feelings and questions around that. It’s very important as writers that we
retain the right to write stories that aren’t necessarily analogous to our own
experiences. At the same time there are important conversations about cultural
appropriation, and as a white middle-class man I have to be sure to listen to
that, and engage with that.
“I like to think I’m quite disciplined about treading that line, but
in a cultural sector in which audiences are by and large hugely middle class,
marginalised voices can become commodified as a kind of sexy aesthetic, and are
only made possible by this hermetically sealed bubble of middle class whiteness.
You can go to some theatres with my accent and feel alienated and completely
out of place, so there’s a spectrum there, and it’s complicated.”
The form
of Mouthpiece may be different to how it started out, but there is a
recognisable through line from Beats through to Chalk Farm and Square Go.
“I
have a tendency to write working class boys,” says Hurley, “but I’m not writing
autobiographically in any way. There are elements of me in both characters in
Mouthpiece, but neither of them are me. The play is about the relationship
between these two people as much as anything else going on. I know writers
writing about writers writing a play sounds about as meta as it gets, but it’s
also kind of love story in a way. I’m a great believer that theatre should be a
good night out as much as anything.”
As
with all of Hurley’s work, this underlying sense of empathy with everyday
domestic struggles is what gives his plays their own sense of authenticity that
helps illustrate their bigger picture. Mouthpiece may focus on the very
pertinent questions of access to the arts both for audiences and would-be
practitioners, but it keeps things grounded just as Hurley attempts to in the
face of his own successes.
“It
isn’t a big black and white message play,” he says, “but I hope it says
something about who gets to tell stories, about the stories that are excluded
and some of the complexities around class around all that. It’s about who does
or doesn’t get to produce art and culture in society. Out of that comes a much
bigger conversation about privilege and power.”
Mouthpiece,
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, December 5-22.
The Herald, November 29th 2018
ends
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