On
the face of it, Tim Crouch and Milo Rau have very different approaches to
theatre. This should become very clear in new shows by these two mavericks
taking part separately in Edinburgh International Festival’s You Are Here
strand.
Crouch’s
magnificently named Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial Salvation,
produced by the National Theatre of Scotland, is a typically Crouchian piece of
meta theatre, which involves the audience taking part in the show by way of a
book handed to them as they enter the auditorium. Rau’s La Reprise, presented by Swiss-born
Rau’s provocatively named International Institute of Political Murder company, is
a dark documentary take on a real life murder in Belgium which brings together
a mix of professional and non-professional performers.
As
with all theatre, the truth of both shows comes from utilising different forms
of artifice. Rau’s piece even bears the subtitle, Histoire(s) du theatre (1).
As this suggests, it forms the first part of a long-term performative
investigation into theatre. In the case of La Reprise, it questions how
violence and other traumatic events can be depicted onstage.
“We
found the story by accident,” says Lau of La Reprise’s true crime drama about a
man killed and tortured by a group of young men outside a gay club in Liege.
“We were thinking about what to do, and one of the company read about it. The
crime was very intriguing, because there was no motivation. It was reported in
some places as a homophobic murder, and we could have made a simple play
against homophobia, but it’s more complex than that. The young men who killed
the man had no plan. It was completely senseless, and that’s why it’s so
tragic. You could compare it to Oedipus killing his father.”
What
emerges from this is a detective story of sorts that investigates theatre
itself as much as the story that unfolds. Such lines of inquiry have been
similarly central to much of Crouch’s work over the last decade or so. Where
shows he’s brought to Edinburgh Festival Fringe shows including My Arm, An Oak
Tree and The Author have played with notions of reality and the relationship
between those on and off stage, Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial
Salvation takes things further, with an illustrated book playing a key part in
the show.
“Every
audience member is given a book as they enter the theatre,” Crouch says. “The
lights are on, and people look at the illustrations in the book to learn the
play’s back story. There’s a younger woman onstage, and an older women watching
her, and the actors take over, but at points we go back to the illustrations,
and together, we make our way through the story.
“The
impetus for the play was to write about belief. I don’t want to write about
Christianity or Islam, but about why people believe in something despite
empirical evidence to the contrary. In terms of theatre, we might be told that
Maxine Peake or Andrew Scott are Hamlet, and we believe that even though we
know they’re not.”
The
truths in La Reprise may or may not be more literal in ways that have arguably
been the case since Rau formed International Institute of Political Murder
company in 2007. Since then, more than fifty stage productions have been
created. Beyond theatre, Rau and his collaborators have made films, hosted
exhibitions and published books and manifestos. Part of this is to avoid being
didactic, and as Rau says, referring to Danish film-makers Lars von Trier and
Thomas Vinterberg’s mid 1990s statement of intent, any manifesto produced by
him “isn’t like Dogme. All the directors I work with are completely different
aesthetically, so while I’m making a political statement, I don’t want to
impose my ideas on people. The core for me is what happens in the performance.
Theatre for me shouldn’t be about giving political advice. Yes, write a
manifesto, but preaching onstage doesn’t work, so it’s better to outsource it
in other ways.”
In
this sense, while La Reprise draws from a real situation, it doesn’t seek to
recreate it verbatim. This is something Rau made clear to the family of the
murdered man.
“It’s
based on what happened,” he says, “but a play is a play, and will be different.
The family are emotionally intelligent people, and understand that. We don’t
try to solve the crime. It’s about someone getting killed and why, and that’s
it. Our conception of the play is very dark, but I think there is light at the
end.”
While
Crouch similarly doesn’t want to impose things on an audience, he nevertheless
recognises some of the very current things he’s looking at.
“I
think it’s quite a political piece,” he says. “It sounds glib, but I think it’s
about the patriarchy, and how men run things in a way that’s a not too distant
a cousin to The Author. There is a man controlling the experience, and at the
end his authority is profoundly challenged. One of the things behind the play
is how we submit to a certain narrative, and how that narrative controls our
belief systems.”
La
Reprise, Edinburgh International Festival @ Royal Lyceum Theatre, August 3-5,
8-9.40pm, August 4, 2-3.40pm. Total Immediate Collective Imminent Terrestrial
Salvation, Edinburgh International
Festival @ The Studio, August 7-25 (not 12, 19, 21, 24), 8-9.20pm, August 10,
11, 14, 17, 21, 22, 24, 25, 3-4.20pm.
The Herald, August 3rd 2019
ends
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