The Column2008/9
Disclaimer: the views and opinions expressed in this blog are not necessarily the views held by FringeReview. Please address any complaints concerning anything offensive or inaccurate in these blogs to our editors at gubbins@fringereview.co.uk
16th July 2010 The Fringes are growing and, in London, there are more of them. The programmes are growing and there seem to be more "dates" than ever, especially in theatre and comedy. How do they do it? How do they travel to Oxford, then Buxton., taking in one of the London fringes, before heading up to Edinburgh, then over to Ireland, and maybe even popping across to New York, and even Canada? They are, of course, Fringe mad, and this is a condition we have known about for a long time. They can't all have rich parents or dwindling legacies. There must be some kind of sustainable model to it. Yes, I said it, sustainable. Many are coming from the many drama school's that have sprung up in warehouse buildings once occupied out of town by Toys R Us or MFI. Others have spilled out of office jobs and call centres and want to try something more create - anything but where they have fled from. But the majority are seeing the fringes as a kind of touring possibility in their own right. I'd love to see the costing model. Perhaps it's a new lifestyle, and it is certinaly to be welcomed from the fringe theatre point of view. Perhaps it becomes more sustainable with the advent of free fringes and camping out of town. Perhaps the fringes around the UK (and even the world) will have to join up a bit more when they realise they are becoming a mini touring circuit in their own right for more and more acts and productions. This has, of course, been happening with some shows for years, but it is growing as a phenomenon. Where the money comes from to do it, I'm still not sure unless... unless you can actually at least break even doing it! But how? Tell me HOW? 2nd July 2010 The Art of Failure
It's happened again. This time it was another sweet shop selling retro-sweets - fruit salads, Mojos and the like, at over a quid for a hundred grammes, at the out-of-town top of St James' Street, all pink, edible and gay-friendly and, sadly, commercially a dead duck from the start. Everyone could see it coming. Was there every anyone in there? There'll be a loan to pay off, a story of closure to tell, and a lingering sense of "My two year old daughter could have told you that business idea was a non-starter." You see it all over town. The boards are up; there's activity within for a few weeks, and then the shop opens, selling only muffins, or Finnish ice cream, or gifts and cards all themed on turtles or meerkats, often located (for the cheaper rent or lease) on side streets that few people venture along. What were these people thinking of? So much hope and so little common sense? Some of the entrepreneurs have an air of death-wish about them from the moment you see them, but others are clearly just self-deluded or plain crazy. So with some Fringe shows. They arrive, you can't quite believe the show's title or its premise. You wonder "what on earth...? You watch the one-star reviews drip in, you see them forlornly flyering. A musical version of Harold Shipman's life, a four hour Greek drama set in a swimming pool, a contemporary dance piece about an obscure piece of social media, a sketch show about condoms and cancer performed by an ensemble cast of sixteen, an all female version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs presented as a cutting attack on male stereotypes. They flounder, they fall, and we all saw it coming. And they didn't have a clue. And yet there's a footnote to this little clever diatribe of mine. In Brighton, the expensive oriental cosmetics shop on no-hope street is still there. The Scandinavian Ice Cream shop that sells a brand of Swedish chocolate called "Plopp" is thriving, and one cafe I said had no chance, is one of the most popular in town, is doing great trade. Within madness often lie the seeds of a new wisdom. And common sense has the Achilles Heel of often being its own form of madness in the community of unrecognised geniuses. Roll on the Fringe!
24th June 2010 I lost the bet, but the jury is still out
Chris Cooke from Three Weeks wins this bet, a bet I am sort of happy to lose. The number of registered shows at Edfringe 2010 is up, up, up! Records broken, etc. etc .etc. I predicted a recessionary Fringe last year and many production companies had cut budgets and tightened belts, though most still decided to give Edinburgh a go, and have done so this year. A quick look at the programme shows new venues on offer, Hill Street back and also Roman Eagle Lodge.
Last year I felt the overall standard of theatre was down, as it was at Brighton Fringe. The standard lifted this year in Brighton and it was good to see budgets raised slightly. I do wonder when the predicted cuts in the arts will kick in. Am I a miserable bastard. an addict of doom? I'm quite a jolly sort of person, but I am interested in the phenomena of Fringe. Free Fringe continues to develop; it's good to see fringe theatre holding up well at this year's Edinburgh Fringe.
The Edinburgh Fringe evolves. Last year, as press, we felt the arms of the Fringe leadership were in a gesture of openness. We raised our own game to support the Fringe post-box office meltdown. We fully committed to Fringe Central hosted activities and look forward to Meet the Press events this year. We hope the Fringe stays warm towards its community, open and open-minded. We look for flexibility and NOT a return to the over-bureaucratic days of the past. Edfringe is a community AND a business opportunity. These things are not mutually exclusive. But the business imperative can, if handled clumsily, turn the Fringe into a corporation rather than a thriving arts initiative. It's about managing the dynamics and learning to sometimes say no to market forces in favour of community cohesion. This is going to be, in my view, the critical success factor in the coming years - finding a community cohesion and sustainability as the post-recessionary forces kick in, one of which will assert itself in trying to take us all back to the olden days of growth for its own sake. Growth needs to serve a purpose, and that purpose needs to be conscious, not just around a board room table, but also vibrantly alive in the stakeholder community.
24th May 2010 Refreshing Improv
The Noise Next Door are an impressive, high-octane improv troupe. We regularly rate them highly on FringeReview. After seeing several of their shows, these Chicago-school-standard improvisers, like the Maydays, clearly anchor much of their improv onto the sea-bed of tricks of the trade, for example their songs. Audiences love them; I think they are full of just the right zing and competence. I acknowledge their talent, the amount of group skills development they clearly do, and their impressive skill. In many ways they are "leading edge" in this field.
The only weakness can be, as with computer games and virtual worlds, that regular viewing can become too comfortable - you get to feel the boundaries they are working within, the walls of the game - the structures they anchor their playfulness to. They can be, and are often, genius - but it's a genius of content often within structures that become more visible over time. For many in the "improv" field, these structures and anchors are seen as necessary as cement is to a builder; without them, the building will totter and fall.
At this year's Brighton Fringe, we saw a few examples of improv that appeared to ride more by the seat of its structural pants as well. There were elements of a more raw improv in Tales from the Coffee House, and Katy and Rach often make it up in ways that are much more emergent and white-canvassy. Of course, we all have sub-conscious structures as work in our theatrical expression, unless we do specific inner work on really trying to find a truly emergent inner space. Being, as C.S. Lewis put it, "surprised by joy", is highly difficult and some would say, impossible, for the very process and intention of seeking it out is, itself a kind of anchor or structure.
However, the moments of truly unstructured and unplanned improv in Katy and Rach, in "Tales", and sometimes in the Noise Next Door creates what I have often referred to as the "electric moments". It's a risk, it can become it and miss, but the hits can truly rise to the realm of both stunning AND original. I'd like to see more of it. I think we, as reviewers of improv, need to raise the bar and expect some of the anchors to be cut and left on the floor of the sea bed, even at the expense of security and certain-ness. For, if we don''t, the forms are going to become cliched (they already are in my view, to an extent), the content variability won't be enough to thrill. It's time to let the boats of improvised drama sail without the safety of anchors and go where they will.
19th May 2010 Plays with Beginning, Middle and End Can Never Be Outstanding?
I've met the Fringe Art Creature again. The Fringe Art Creature can be of any age, size or gender. The Fringe Creature is aghast when we give five stars to a straight piece of old-fashioned style theatre. It may be a play or a musical and it may be "light". As an example of its genre it will be outstanding, will often gain a standing ovation from its audience, the acting will be perfectly suited to its style. It probably won't be set in a department store of a sewer, it may not involve the projection of film onto the actors' stomachs. The Fringe Art Creature doesn't "get" traditional theatre and thinks it incredible that it might ever be five-star-able.
There's been a movement in cuisine for years to get back to plain food, cooked to perfection. The culinary artists who favour this see it as progressive, not regressive. There's a way of staging traditional theatre that can be refreshing. For example, Here Comes the Bride, which we gave an award to and five-starred, was staged in a church of difficult acoustics and, on the night I attended, pulled it off. The singing was mostly outstanding and there was a shamelessly sentimental script, aimed at a "Positive" audience who responded to it with delight (I saw a few Fringe Art Creatures in the audience as fixed in their own reactions as they might claim traditional theatre makers are in their own creation process).
There's a potentially outstanding way of being traditional that can involve subverting the form - Here Comes the Bride was set site-specifically and made use of existing popular music in well chosen ways (mostly). It also made clever use of a narrator, telling the story via a pastiche on the Wedding March. There was also a remarkable infectious sense of the cast enjoying themselves, playfully challenging the fourth wall. And yet it also came across as a good old fashioned musical. We rewarded it in review for all of those aspects.
Fringe Art Creatures are, ironically, conservative and myopic in one essential area of art: the ability to innovate WITH the traditional in minimal but powerful ways, not just to (often clunkily and radically) innovate OUT of it purely for its own sake.
19th May 2010 The FringeReview Furrowed Brow
A few reflections on our reviewing this year. The dangers of only publishing reviews of three stars are more is that "three becomes the new zero". I've had to remind several of our reviewers that our scale runs from one to five, and that a three-star review is a good, recommended show. Shows which fall below three, we don't publish the review but offer private feedback. We are a "good food guide" to the fringe, pointing out the good to outstanding theatre eateries, not focusing any attention on those not worth eating it. So, all the shows reviewed here are the ones we recommend seeing. It's therefore vital that reviewers don't use the three starred shows as an opportunity to sneak in harsh criticism simply because their egos can't be satisfied by not having a review of something they have seen and not rated as good theatre published.
I find it sad how many people think it is a duty to shame shows publicly at ALL opportunities. When I go to a new city I prefer to buy a guide that I can trust (usually on reputation) and that will recommend places to visit. Sometimes I just wander and trust to instinct, but when I have limited time, a guide is invaluable. A guide of what to see has easy accessibility as a quality; thick guides I have to wade through telling me what to avoid are not what I am looking for. That's what FringeReview is partly about. You visit this publication and there's a list of recommendations, a kind of filter of all the many shows on offer. This doesn't mean al shows NOT reviewed here are bad; it means that here is a considered selection from people who keep their ear to the ground.
Three star shows are GOOD shows worth seeing. Though you may find significant criticisms of one or more aspects of three star shows, you'll not find a review of a three star show on FringeReview that doesn't point to its virtues and why it is worth seeing.
My brow furrows when I see some of our reviewers forgetting the spirit of three-star show reviews. It happens rarely and I am addressing it here again. If a reviewer has seen a good show then that needs to be the core of their review with critique part of it, but not the sole object of it. They need to say what is good about it and critique needs to always be constructive. Often a reviewer will express frustration with a three-star show that could have been so much better, but the review must always be clear about the recommended status of it.
If you are looking for a good, very good or outstanding play to see, then FringeReview is an ideal place to visit. If you're looking for a comprehensive list of shit and honey, there are plenty of shit and honey sites and publications already out there.
10th May 2010 Suffocating Research I very much enjoyed Five Clever Courtesans at the Marlborough Theatre this week. The acting was strong and much of the dialogue funny with some wonderful banter between this historical whore quintet. Five Courtesans are thrown together after death, by the Goddess Venus, and they share their personal life stories in a wickedly funny way. What let the writing down a bit was the obviously copious research that had gone into fleshing out the characters and their life stories being allowed to suffocate the monologue and dialogue. Some of the lines sounded as if they had been lifted directly from a history book (I am not saying they were, it just sounded like that) and it also gave all of the five characters a vanilla wash at times. Writers can spend hours in libraries, travelling to interviews, visiting places and, increasingly these days, glued online, and they can get very emotionally attached to the investment in research they have undertaken. I think it was Winston Churchill who said that the best way to keep power is to give it away. Ritual burning of the research material can be a good way to let go of material that should not find its way into a script, overburdening the lines with too many "interesting facts" and even polemic. When research material is put into the mouths of characters, it has to be properly rendered - there's a translation and, ideally, a complete transmutation. Facts can be more interesting to a writer than an audience and, sometimes, they can be more interesting to the audience than the writer who gathered them in during the research process. Getting an independent viewpoint can be helpful here. But there's also no substitute for self awareness in the writer. The problem is that a writer really can fall in love with their pre-work, their hard-fought-for facts and documentary source material, especially in historical plays or plays exploring our frontiers of knowledge and thinking. Love doesn't lend itself easily to self-awareness - it is rarely selfless when we are lost inside it. The writer needs perspective. Weighing down characters to research-heaviness is a kind of betrayal of them and it will create a sluggishness in the audience response. This is also where dramaturgy can come into its own. In my own work I tend to go for the "write first, research later" approach. If I am not sure of my facts I make them up, and then let my later research prove me wrong; I adjust accordingly. This usually ensures I do not fall in love with my research material, and keeps me focused on the writing as the priority for energy and focus. "Letting go" of stuff can sound too new agey for some, but that is what writers must do. The bin must be fuller than the desk tray; the source material should serve the play, not suffocate it.
3rd May 2010 In Half Swing Three shows seen so far, one five star, one four and one three - all recommended for different reasons. FringeReview has stuck like glue to the idea that a three star review isn't a bad review - it's a good review. The show could improve in a number of ways, but it's well worth a look. We're going to resist the Edinburgh-led unspoken pressure to only value four or five star reviews. The time is going when there will be only five star reviews or nothing, echoing the George Bush polarity of "Either you're with us or you're against us." There's a great distaste among many for star rating at all and I tend to agree with that distaste. We offer our three to five stars for shows we believe are worth seeing and we remain a site to visit to find the good fayre on offer. It helps readers to identify quickly what's recommended, though many punters do enjoy reading our wonderfully overlong reviews. They're like personal recommendations from a trusted friend who you wish would just shut up and buy you a damn ticket. If you get a three star review from FringeReview, don't feel panned. A three star show is a recommended show, a show with enough to commend it that we should recommend it! And if you are a punter and browsing our reviews, remember we have seen other shows and they haven't made it onto our site because our reviewers haven't deemed them as of high enough standard to recommend. The three star ones are good. Go see them as well.
23rd April 2010 Post site-specific I'm coining a new phrase. "Post-site specific" is an emerging theatrical form which pays direct homage to pre-site-specific theatre. It involves the creation of performance which takes place within a defined performance space known as a theatre. The process is often as follows: An audience arrives at a building known as a "theatre". They give their ticket to a person often called an "usher" (dressed to look like a meek library worker) who then leads them upstairs into the performance space. This is usually organised as rows of chairs with a stage at one end, often obscured by a curtain which divides down the middle and can be opened by means of a rope pulley hidden off stage. An electric moment, known as the "opening scene", a person asks the audience to switch off their mobile phones, which creates an air of shattering sacredness about what is about to occur. The performance then follows a very specific structure known as a "beginning, middle and an end" with the actors working to a "learned script". (surely a metaphor for the prescribed and repressed lives all live) The piece of often startlingly punctuated by a break in the middle known as an "interval" (surely a metaphor for the punctured lives we all live) where they are rudely ejected from the performance space and sent to a bar to get drinks, before returning, up the SAME STAIRS - often back to the same seat to watch the rest of the performance. Weird, eh? This year's Fringe has more than its fair share of site-specific work, in police cells, depatment stores, earth ships and regency houses, to name but a few. Rumours are that the funders favour it, and it can be exciting and different to experience. It can also be laboured and forced. I do think it points to a dissatisfaction with the static nature of many theatre venues and that Generation Y find the traditional beginning, middle and endness of a classic play to be too stilted and unmoving in a world where social media is about changes-per-second and flightiness. I think black box spaces will do better over the coming years than traditional fixed seat, stage-at-one-end venues. Time to rip the seats out and buy staging blocks? And yet, perhaps we are losing something eseential - the vitality of meeting performance with our our active stillness as audiences, of watching something unfold that is unashamedly a play in a theatre - a story, something directly presented AS a story, needing nothing more than we witness it, enter into it with still bodies and active, moving imaginations. Will the televisiual, 3D generation demand that all theatre moves a lot, or will there be a backlash and a return to something more simple and traditional? Will post-site-specfic become a new genre in the world of wireless and police-cell based performance?
11th April 2010 The Learning/Earning Curve So, Oxfringe comes to a close. A record number of shows, a warm feel, cascaded right across the event from the two co-organisers, a struggle for audience for many shows, and some pretty full houses for some others. Murmers of discontent at the Copa Upstairs at the lack of soundproofing highlights the learning curve that can undermine the earning curve. Oxfringe will need to take time to gather in the lessons from this year's Fringe - the good, the bad and the ugly! How to boost ticket sales across the board, how to ensure that performing companies arriving from outside of Oxford can "hit the ground running" on publicity and pre-sales, and, of course, how to make it uniquely Oxford. On the Brighton Fringe front, there seem to be more venues than ever, a lot of site specific work, despite the fall in registrations. There's a buzz of expectation around the new tented venue - Free Range. Will it surpass the purple cows and spielgthingies? The earning expectations of performing companies will be higher now we are "coming out of recession" but precisely how much spending will be lavished on Fringe things in May remains to be seen. I've been quite shocked a the (more than 10) number of performing companies' web site links on the Fringe listings lead to "under Construction" or "Coming Soon" signs, and one even led me to an offshore fishing site. Companies will need to get real about putting their shows on the map, especially if they are new to the game or the town. Brighton will not provide a ready-made queue of people for each show; they will have to be nudged out of their comfy boudoirs, especially if it rains in May. There's a flakiness about some theatre companies that makes them their own worst enemy. Oxfringe had a vibrant programme, attracting companies from the rest of the UK and beyond. Some shows did well. Others really struggled for audiences, partly because of the limitations on flyering in the city, but also because they didn't do the pre-Fringe work necessary to raise awareness about their show. Advertising shows in the counties of West and East Sussex around Brighton as well as the potential London audience is also import. Flyering in places like Lewes (using legal flyering methods) can also help get those asses on seats. In the end, the earning curve will be depressed by laziness and avoiding really facing up to the painful learning curve associated with getting a full house. In Brighton, as in Edinburgh, there can be flyer overkill and the use of New Road for Fringe City does help shows to promote themselves. But there needs to be much better signage outside many venues, more conscious use of social media with REGULAR show updates, and, of course, a competent PR strategy. Here's once again hoping a proper press list can be provided in future to all performers.
3rd April 2010 Beware Facebook "Commitment" The experiments are done. The data analysed, the pseudo-scientific results ready to be presented. I've recently organised a couple of events and advertised them on facebook where people can say they are definitely coming, maybe coming, not coming, or can ignore the event. Here's the outcome: About 90% of people who say they are coming, do not show up. About 1% of maybes show up, and about 5% of people who either ignore the event or say they aren't coming, actually show up. I am sure there are many explanations that can be put forward for these commitment-averse behaviours. Why do people say they are coming to an event (some are even in Australia or Canada) and then not show up? Is to to show moral support? Is it that were really intending to come and circumstances beyond their control mitigated against their ability to deliver themselves in person? Or is there a phenomenon here where people simply don't see real personal commitment as real anymore? Do I sound hurt or wounded? Not really. Luckily I used other means of invitation, such as that retro, quaint method called Word-of-Mouth. But I think there's a warning here for fringe theatre companies using social media to promote their events and maybe even making resource decisions based on the information the media platforms throw up. (Good phrase here, "throw up"). Don't rely on facebook commitment as any reliable indication of who will actually show up at your production or performance. At best, it's a list that can help you feel socially supported, but these RSVPs don't amount to a hill of beans.
30th March 2010 View from the Ox-Bridge Just back from Oxford where I had the chance to see (and review) a few shows at Oxfringe, and to meet the inspiring Sarah Jones and Heather Dunmore who carry the whole thing on their shoulders (with their team of course!). Oxfringe feels small, though there are a lot of shows. They've attracted a lot of post-Edinburgh shows and comedians such as Zemblanity, Teakshow, Bite-Size, Jo Neary to name just a few). Audience numbers are a challenge and there's a need in my view for the dates to be shifted to allow students to come (who are all away at this Fringe!). I saw a wonderful Antigone and very much enjoyed Roas Adler's Jubilate! (catch her "LOL" later in the Oxfringe programme).
Like most Fringes, Oxfringe is looking to reach critical mass. In the mad world of UK Fringe, critical mass usually signals the arrival of a Spiegeltent or an upsidedown, several hundred-seater cow, courtesy of Udderbelly. Yet, Fringes also need to be uniquely ther own, if they are to generated a local sense of ownership - this sounds a bit nationalistic, but what I really mean is that diversity is based on a celebration of uniqueness and different, not division for its own sake, but because diversity creates a richness of taste and experience. Oxfringe was once on the Fringe of a literary festival. I think it needs to be on the Fringe of something - perhaps partly on the Fringe of its own university cultural heritage and/or love of the literary. (Also see gallery of photos)
23rd March 2010 The New Edinburghs? A lot of Fringes claim to be THE Fringe. Edinburgh claims to have always been THE Fringe. Fringe's such as Brighton and Oxford lay came to be THE EMERGING Fringe's (Brighton's been doing that for a long time). Camden laid claim to being THE London Fringe. Of course, the Fringe Scene in Canada can probably justly claim to be THE FRINGE if you count all their many Fringes across that vast land. Oxford looks promising. It is growing, and yet there's a community feel about it's web site, without there being an amateur feel about it. It's good to see the site's development with easier access to show listings and online booking. More press are reviewing it and, perhaps, most tellingly of all, it's becoming a place on the tour circuit (that even big, established shows like Bite-Size and Meeting Joe Strummer are stopping by at for more than one performance). Even more tellingly are the shows that are using Oxfringe as part of a pre-Edinburgh try out. The real arrival point happens when Fringe's become the places, not of pre-'Edinburghing', but when people preview before arriving at THEM! Oxfringe feels like it isn't far off Critical Mass, Like Brighton, some shows are staying for several days, and week runs may not be far away. One nice quirk at Brighton have been shows that play a few days at the beginning of May and then a few days a couple of weeks later. This allows strong reviews to go up onto posters and persuade new audience to book. I'm looking forward to a brief reviewing stint at Oxford this weekend. The challenge will be to keep their own flavour, their own uniqueness, whilst stepping up to the plate and the challenges of growth that reaching sustainable, critical mass often requires, without sinking into corporatism.
20th March 2010 The Doom on the Garden Arts funding is going to be cut. There's a vast number of artists I know "out there" for whom this will mean very little. They will nod, perhaps sigh, and then get on with whatever they are doing. Most Brightonians I know who would call themselves creative have little to do with public sector funding. Occasionally they may get an "R&D" grant or some money that is allowed to be used for anything except the actual creation of art (sometimes called an Organisation Development Grant), but mostly their ability to sustain their work (often on the back of another career's higher earnings (an office job or some web design work) is not dependent on the bureaucracies and the games of government with its fingers clutching the very spirit of creativity, invasive and interfering. Of course this creates a problem. Because I do also know some artists and arts enablers, whose organisations rely a bit too heavily on "Regular Funding", on the actual payment of salaries and office rental. These organisations are going to rue the day they became so dependent on government funding. As the nation tries to claw back hundreds of billions, the Arts is not going to fare well, especially where groups have become reliant on their basic "business processes." Most of my friends will continue to dip into the arts, enjoy their creativity and also hold down other jobs (teaching is a favourite for many actors and visual artists, as well a charity call centres). The key lesson to learn - and I know of one "RFO" that has fortunately learned this - is to take a leaf out of other industries' books and learn the importance of never being too dependent on either one supplier or one customer. This RFO has, over recent years, built up a range of funding sources and started to spread the risk. If you are 90% reliant on a public sector funding source, then you are likely in for some big trouble over the coming years. Doom, doom, doom? Yes, for some. I will NOT say, "Get on your bike". I will sigh, and nod sadly, and wish we had a world that saw art and important to humanity as health. Art is health.
2nd March 2010 The One-Minute Pitch for the Future At the Fringe Report First Monday drinks at the Coach and Horses in London yesterday I listened eagerly to the pitches of theatre makers and venue seekers alike and, once again, was infected by the passion and enthusiasm that people, often without a penny of funding, have for their work. I do get a sense that art, for many people, isn't just about pitching our show or film project, our comedy night or site-specific installation, it's tat THESE things are part of a bigger. personal pitch for a more satisfying future. Many people seek a home in the arts as a place that is freer of predictability, of the mediocrity of repetitive work, and for a more vibrant and engaging social life. The Arts then becomes a place of refuge, not just a place of original creation. This isn't necessary a bad thing in itself. However with an overall lack of funding, more and more people are then self-publishing and creating work on a shoestring, trying to hold down day jobs and the line between hobby and profession, between fad and vocation blurs. Commitment becomes a kind of Facebook Commitmernt, slightly beyond "Maybe Attending" and too far short of a Definite Commitment to showing up at one's own destiny event.
24th February 2010 Sameness Addiction? Whilst we wait with baited breath for the emergence of the brand new Edfringe.com website, and we hear the good news that Brighton in May will not be tentless and, indeed, is going Freerange, if not organic, I've started to notice sameness addiction syndrome - which I hereby copyright and trademark as SAS (whoops). Sameness Addiction is a paradoxical behaviour whereby a person, in order to keep the little amount of energy they have left, under a barrage of cliched media and literal pummelling of image and repetition to conform, flees into further easy conformity. So, a person will walk past a new Brighton cafe, opened with uniqueness by a local creative visionary with cheap lovely coffee and stunning decor, and instead flee into expensive and vanilla Starbucks, simply because at least Starbucks won't demand any more of their energy, and that the repetition of going there and the lack of an inner new challenge will perhaps, at least stave off further attack on their remaining "mojo" for another day. Embracing a new cafe is simply too risky, too much effort, might involve thinking individually and looking someone authentically in the eye. Of course, it is a false economy as the cost of the repetitive coffee and the lack of satisfaction at a deeper level erodes the mojo further anyway in the longer run. The "rot" sets in, despite our attempts to avoid it. Sameness addiction is developed over time as we literally become comfortable numb and trade the safe numbness for risky pins and needles of newness. At least we can hope our mojo will remain safe for a day in the future when we can finally get around to making use of it. As a new tented space arrives in Brighton I hope it and its patrons do not become sameness addicts. I hope it seeks newness, is open to change and to innovate, experiment, and risk using up precious mojo energy on some originality. Or will it simply be another Spiege-l or Udder-tent in a slightly different form, peddling expensive lager, crap wine, and a barrage of cold, wet stand-up? Come on unique Brighton Fringe - you have a chance here!
16th February 2010 The Doldrums are Over! The distinct lack of theatre in the Brighton winter months seems to have passed and new seasons from Three and Ten and New Venture promise much. New venues such as the Old Court Yard (which has nabbed Bite-Size and The Treason show for May, are a welcome addition I eagerly await news of what will occur at the Old Steine, Spielgel-wise. Sources close to FringeReview (I've always wanted to say that) can reveal that theatre will be very well represented at this years' Fringe despite the huge hike in registration fees. But will the Fringe suffer from the aftermath of a recession that was studiously (and courageously or foolishly) avoided by audience and performers alike. Will we get the usual announcement that registrations have broken all previous records etc...? Of course, Children in Need NEVER collects less than the year before and the sense of grow,grow,grow seems somewhat anachronistic in these post-meltdown days. There was a queue of over thirty at Bill's in Brighton for overpriced, mostly non-organic wholesomeness, yesterday. If there was ever a crunch, it certainly doesn't seem to have hit the sun-blushed tomato cult. So I wonder, will the much predicted drastic arts cuts bite this year, or next? Or will the arts festivals escape and become oases of escapism and reactionary spending on the things that matter in life, such as culture? If so, will the fees keep rising or will they fall warmly to meet the rising tide of a human spirit craving creativity and finally fleeing KFC-led DVD-obsessed crapture? |
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