Dr STEVE CRAMER is a freelance journalist and an Arts Journalist lecturer at Queen Margaret’s University. He’s originally from Australia but got sucked into the beauty of Edinburgh and has lived here for countless years exchanging hot weather, beaches and cheap beer for this cosy city. He takes full blame for his generations fuck ups and everyday he apologises, however he’d like to point out he actively protested the questionable choices his peers made. He’s been an arts critic for as long as I’ve been alive and has some great stuff to say about the current state of theatre:
Q: What’s your view on the theatre that’s been produced this year?
A: Well its not been a disastrous year, but its not been strongest year either. I’ve not been able to give five stars to anything, but I’ve seen some good things. EIF is a good opportunity to see good quality work from elsewhere, 4:48 was very good and I enjoyed the work of companies like Team coming to Edinburgh, but local writing has been not brilliant but with things like the Debut Season at least there’s a willingness to experiment.
Q: Has theatre grown marginalised in the course of you covering it?
A: In a sense that theatre doesn’t change, in the sense it’s always a middle class pursuit because theatre tickets are so expensive it tends to be something which often restricts itself to middle class audiences. You’d have to go back as far as the days of 7:84 where there was deliberate action to bring down audience tickets to find a time where the audience was broader. That said I don’t think the audience is any narrower than it used to be but I think there is still the same middle class audience, the problem with that of course is they bring with them middle class expectations to the work they see.
Q: Is there a lull at the moment as we wait for something to burst onto the scene, or is there a more vicious force at work holding back theatre?
A: I think again that element of middle class expectation comes into the theatre and understandably, on some levels, artistic directors and commissioning groups tend to think in terms of: can we play to this particular audience. That said, I think traditionally they have been too conservative in looking at that but not just this year but generally. Art changes with social change and I do believe that the coming economic recession will effect the kind of work we see. The problem with theatre is it always takes a while for social change to filter into the theatre views. It can’t be made as instantaneously as TV and surprisingly on some levels even film sometimes seems to respond faster which is absurd as film takes so long to make, that said I think there is no social change without change in the art form, I suspect we’ll need to wait for a year from now before we see a response to this, however I think the response will incorporate certain aesthetic choices which may make theatre more interesting.
Q: Is it less possible to shock or excite an audience now?
A: That depends what you mean by shock and excite, obviously things like representations of nudity and sexuality have been around so long now that eventually it looks like a cheap gimmick to use these things, in the right context it can still be very effective, but that said we’ve all see a lot and theatre audiences tend to become over sophisticated to devices like that because there’s a sense of been there done that, too cool for school and things like that which you don’t get in mediums like TV, I think the next really controversial areas will be political areas and in a sense that can ask some very compelling questions of the specific group that a middle class audience might represent. One of the things over the next year or two would be ideological expectations loaded on the last 25 years and so in many ways provided theatre artists can respond to that and provided the work isn’t over censored by need to play to a middle class audience we could see some very interesting and controversial work, remains to be seen but I expect we will do.
Art changes with social change and I do believe that the coming economic recession will effect the kind of work we see.
Q: The new writing at the Traverse seems to be going for a more tame and inarticulate version of the Kane In-Yer-Face genre, what do you think about that being used now?
A: I think that’s an example of us waiting for the next thing to happen. I don’t think the next thing is endlessly deferred and I don’t think it’s not going to happen. I think that it can. One of the things that’s happening at the moment is that the people who are getting into major authority in the theatre and beginning to do work of their own kind and own choices are of about my generation. A lot of them went to college in the 80s, what’s interesting about that is we are looking at people coming to full authority who grew up in aesthetically the most conservative period of the 20th century, therefore the undercurrent of that is that there will be a certain amount of conservatism in there assumptions. The disillusionment of those people of that generation that occurred during the Thatcher era where it began to be increasingly felt that no real change could be made is something that still is visited upon intellectually. What’s interesting about that is that those people will not be there forever either and what will happen afterwards might be more interesting.
Q: When you think back to the theatre you were watching a decade ago, did it seem to have more or less vitality?
A: I think both at different times. I think theatre of late 90s and into early 00s did get very stale and dull because people were afraid to go near controversial issues, this is partly to do with funding. Theatre companies are afraid of losing funding, then again 7:84 are an example here in Scotland in the sense they plainly lost their funding for political reasons, although there had been a decline in the work and the last two-three shows they did weren’t as good as the previous ones, the funding was cut unusually quickly for a company in that situation and as a result of that occurring in the 80s a lot of theatre companies made very conservative choices for fear of losing subsidy. I think in a sense we have got just occasionally to people pushing boundaries further which is an interesting thing to see but we need to go a bit further before it gets really interesting, I don’t think that we need to despair though that the theatre will never produce anything exciting. I think there are troughs and peaks and there have always been with a longer historical view you can see that for 200 years.
Q: What sort of work would you like to see on the stage now?
A: I think the kind of work I’d like to see needs to challenge both aesthetic and political boundaries. I think that, again to mention a company like Team, this is a company that is specially made for theatre, it’s not trying to imitate TV like a lot of theatre does, it’s not trapped in forms of realism and yet at the same time it’s not trapped in all that magic realist game play which was essentially a form of escapism that dominated the 80s and 90s instead it has something solid accessible and intelligent to say about the society we live in now. If you look at work of companies like Team then its plain to see that the aesthetic assumptions underneath theatre are changing among the younger generation and I think that’s a very, very exciting thing.
DAVID GREIG was born in Edinburgh in 1969 but brought up in Nigeria. He studied drama in Bristol and began writing and putting on plays as cheaply as possible. Now he is one of Scotland’s leading playwrights and has been commissioned by the Royal Court, RSC and currently NTS. His most prolific work includes Yellow Moon, which has just been staged in Norway. On board at the Traverse, he mentors young writers and offers help where it’s needed. Recently he wrote and directed Midsummer for the Traverse, a two-hander that takes a satirical look at the form of romcom with music written by Gordon McIntyre from indie band Ballboy.
I’m very conscious that your 21, how do you make your art and live?
Q: What kind of thresh do you think theatre can be for my generation, what sort of future do you think theatre holds given the current economic climate?
A: It’s good. The reason is: theatre the pay is rubbish, but its always been rubbish. People go on that theatre is losing its audience but they’ve been saying that since 1950. It always gains just enough, it gains minority audience. Because pays badly, theatre survives recession well, the government doesn’t worry about it. For example the 1980s, even under Thatcher when the government actively hostile to theatre, plays literally called “Fuck Thatcher” were allowed to be staged and even she didn’t cut funding, and over fifteen years theatre got so tight, the 90s got so tight it was no fun, if you were thinking at the moment of a career in any other field jobs are going to be shrinking all over the shop. The second recession is very good for theatre because it as draws attention to fact the local. For example, green issues and oil, theatre is profoundly local art form it’s profoundly community based, it’s about social interaction, these are all things that people again when they are feeling rich might want to hive off from everyone watching DVDs but when you’re under cosh, everyone wants to get together, theatre needs to respond with cheaper tickets. To quote Brecht: “Theatre is a transformative art, but the people it transforms most are the people who participate in making it.” The act of making theatre is usually the way we all encounter it. It’s youth theatre or a college or school, these are free, you can’t make a movie without money, but you can with stage, which exactly how I make theatre. Doing it for no money. One big difference is when I started we used to have a relatively benign dole office so we could just about live if we were prepared to sign on which allows to make shows with no money. Artistically I don’t know where we are going, but it is going to be made and young people are going to make it. It’s a good time in a strange way to be coming in, times of turbulence and change.
Q: As a generation we’re becoming increasingly alienated with technology etc so do you think the human tactility of the stage is even more important now?
A:This is a time of a revival in something you might call “folk music”, its been going on for a while but its nonetheless one of the current idioms of music I’m hearing, when folk is revived its usually a signal that people are being drawn back towards various themes, one of which is obviously scenes of land and nature, and also scenes of a thrust against technology, pro human, each generation uses this, for example the 60s with cheap vinyl, and now with the internet you can make and produce music at no cost. What interests me is that theatre isn’t anti internet but compliments it well, and I profoundly believe in the human of the theatre, it’s about at the moment and now, and what they are doing is performing, that is not going to go away, it’s a human need, as strong as food. Just because people need theatre doesn’t mean they need the Traverse or David Greig, but the general need to get together and tell stories is so human it’s not going to go away. I’m very conscious that your 21, how do you live and make your art and live? Is that art that you want to make allowed to go on in the spaces available? Is this a viable form that has a time limit? No, I think it’s a essential as singing.
Q: What are the differences in nurturing young talent now compared to when you were a new writer? What structures are in place for new writers?
A:It’s profoundly different in some ways, the world I was bought up in, new writers were on the fringe, marginalised, and the Traverse was only place doing it at the time, everywhere else places were working on classical pieces. In the1990s new writing blew apart, if you give audiences something new and about where they are now, people really like it. Difficulties are now with the classical as new writers need to revive. Now new writing is sort, before you needed to make your presence felt, there wasn’t a strong culture of workshops etc. But having said that it’s a big tricky if you’re a young writer now, as you need to develop talent, I didn’t workshop, I wrote and put on, I didn’t do classical theatre, there were plenty of people in my generation doing that. Now obvious route is to go to workshops and you could end up without the self-adventure with such a structure for development now, it’s easy to get sucked in. There are a lot more opportunities to get paid, and certainly a lot more work to get mentoring, but on the other side in a way what if you want to make own company, write not in a way follows convention it might be harder.
Q: So the Debut season mainly dealt with the aged issues of family dysfunction, religion, with two of the plays featuring textually questionable rape. What do you think to the kind of theatre that’s being written and stage by young writers, thinking mainly about the Debut season?
A: Well, I guess what I would say is Sams’ play, Cockroach, struck me as a very questing play. It did occur to me that her play was an indictment of my generation, looking at big questions of male and female and war, asking why do we kill or rape. My generation inherited a world where we would’ve explained war in relation to political powers, we destroyed that with a very totalised vision. When I watched Cockroach it was questing for answers where there’s no superstructure to build on. It’s a bleak play, searching for answers but not finding any. At the end the religious cry biggest single thing that strikes me when I see writing by young people. There is a sense of being sold a pup, you’ve been handed an empty vessel, the kind of culture that’s been passed down to you isn’t our responsibility, we never grew up, if growing up is saying this is what it is, we never did that, we just said: “dunno, kinda, what do you think?”, so when you are faced with war, violence, and questions, its not surprising there’s a bleak response. On simplistic level it’s the inevitable end result of post modernism, the belief we don’t need meaning, but we do need meaning. It astonishes me that the major question of my gen is religion and America and Islamic worlds in the throws of fundamentalism, abdication of the kind of thinking that the progressive left was thinking. For cockroach the writing was exciting but of course in some ways the writing was all over the place.
Your generation has been sold a world that’s ecologically fucked up: an oil crisis, and an infra structure that can’t deal with it, a massive financial debt and inherited countries that are screwed.
Q: Where have you seen fresh young talent?
A: It’s not a great time for new writing at the moment in Scotland, but we are only a small country, but I emerged in 1993, and in that time very exciting new writing would emerge in a five yearly cycle. Sometimes a bunch at a time, but usually not, it’s pretty dry time at the moment but hopefully it’s going to burst soon. It’s very hard to think of playwrights in the last few years coming through though. I’ve Been working with new writers in the Arab world and it’s certainly very interesting to me, and it’s very hard in the Arab world, you can’t put a play on in anyway you can here. Whilst some of the writers I’ve been working with are very good, they aren’t contempory form breakers you’d hope to find in our playwrights. I liked Simon Stevens’ plays at festival but he doesn’t count as new or young. I can’t, when pushed think of who is coming through. But I think that might be my fault. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places, when at heart of it are companies like the companies on at the Traverse in there season of experimental work, Highway Diner or Fish and Game, these are the interesting ones. Always fighting the last war. The next exciting thing might be new writing like in 90s but it hasn’t emerged yet. But there’s something about playwriting that always comes through and I hope and believe that new Scottish writers might emerge saying something clearly and coherently of our time, and speaking on behalf of Traverse it’s not through want of trying, on that level what I yearn for is a kind of poetic voice which is theatrical and trying to question the form in which it’s working and respond to that. I don’t want to see things on stage that look like Skins, theatre is doing something different. I would be much more worried if there were institutional problems within, it feels almost as if institutes are so concerted with new writers there isn’t somebody to resist and say: look at these bastads we need to overthrow them and not be implicated in their forms.
Q: What dreams or aspirations did you have when you entered the theatrical world?
A: Genuinely I thought if I can make a living at it by the time I’m 30 ill carry on. The first task was to do it and try and make it my living, second was to create incredible theatre. I’m very influenced by Brecht and Churchill, also I like hanging around with actors, I like theatres, being in it or making it with people, I like watching plays, I really don’t mind if a play is bad it’s not a major part of my night out, I like watching actors act. It being good is a bonus, that’s what you have to have to a certain degree if you want to mess with the form if it’s the form you love.
I would be very surprised if we don’t see some very angry theatre.
Q: Do you think you’ve kept faith with your ambitions to create incredible theatre or do you think you’ve become or are becoming institutionalised?
A: I think that I have gone on a journey which has involved changing, and I think of those changes as a falling away from the thing that has concerned me. It’s a bit like wearing band t-shirts over a certain age. I am institutionalized, National Theatre of Scotland commission me, it would be unseemly to pretend that my role is to complain or that I’m in some way an outsider, but for me the journey has involved a falling away from my own fears of writing. I’m less afraid of story now, in some ways my plays are getting less radical than before, story I think is a good thing and a form of conceptual theatre, and journey from outside inside and what you might call marginal and I do shows now that have big audiences. The Midsummer set budget was £800, we made it in a month and collaborated with Ballboy, who aren’t exactly Rod Stewart. My impulse is still to create the kind of shows that I want to see and try to push and extend that but that doesn’t necessarily have to involve making things painful for an audience. You can take an audience on a journey, story allows people to lose themselves and they are much more vulnerable to your darker and more subversive thoughts in that context, and you can really fire some dark questions in there. If you start with the darkness people angry and feel like their in a lecture room. Some people like my earlier plays and feel I’ve sold out, you’ve got to be careful it’s very easy to forget. I’m inspired by people like John Peel, you have to keep thinking new writing isn’t there, just because I haven’t found it doesn’t mean its not there. I think it’s my job to stay on top of that. Churchill is someone I look to as model of not becoming institutionalised as a playwright, every new play she does breaks boundaries and her own and that’s what I would really like to emulate, like Dylan says an “artist should always be in state of becoming” of course I feel I’m fortunate that I’m lucky to make a living on what I do, and on the board of the Traverse I could hardly be more institutionalized, but I don’t need to be complacent, I can still keep throwing self challenges, I think Dominic is very much of the same attitude and he’s going to try and push the Traverses’ own boundaries over next few years. I hope institute of the Traverse is not complacent. Your generation has been sold a world that’s ecologically fucked up: an oil crisis, and an infra structure that can’t deal with it, a massive financial debt and inherited countries that are screwed. I don’t see us doing much at this stage to help the next generation get through this, but I’m very hopeful in idealistic way that Obama is going to lead a good process. However, I would be very surprised if we don’t see some very angry theatre.
CHRISTOPHER LYNCH (24) has acted since the age of eleven on stages across Scotland. He is a typical example of a young actor who wants to produce good work but can’t get the money to repeatedly sustain long haul projects. There are nothing but good things to say about this mans ability as an actor: open, energetic and entirely engaged. It’s obvious why Chamber Shakespeare won the award for Outstanding Theatre this year at the Fringe. Chris has a willingness to experiment and discover new ways of transmitting meaning to an audience.
Q: What were you trying to achieve with Chamber Shakespeare?
A: First off, I was just an actor employed by the company: I auditioned and I got in. Basically their take on Shakespearian tragedy is to take out subplots and focus on the protagonists journey so the audience goes on the same journey. I’m interested in really intense Shakespeare which really cuts down to the emotional reality, not big budget costumes and set. We didn’t want the audience to have any relief (not in a psychopathic way) but we wanted them to be dragged into it.
Q: How did you become interested in theatre?
A: When I was really young, about eleven, my drama teacher put me forward for parts that were going in the Lyceum and other theatres around Scotland. I joined a youth theatre and all the training I’ve done is for theatre. Most opportunities for actors are in theatre. I’ve never aggressively pursued film, but then I’ve never aggressively pursued acting. But obviously there aren’t many openings in really good film or TV.
Q: Tell me your views on the Fringe in general.
A: It’s very easy to get into Fringe theatre you can do loads and see loads. I first saw shows when I was thirteen or fourteen and performed which was exciting. It’s a bit big. It depends what you want it to be, if you want it to be a showcase of the best theatre in the world, it isn’t. The Fringe is open to everyone and your left with a smorgasbord of theatre and everyone makes a loss. The film festival picks what should be shown. But I don’t know how EIF would choose what does and doesn’t count as good theatre. But as it is, it isn’t working at the moment.
Q: Do you think theatre as a medium is a bit irrelevant now and not doing what it should be doing?
A: It depends if you think that’s your job, as an actor it’s not really my duty to make people pay attention. I’m not an academic but clearly the world has changed with TV etc, but theatre is still widely seen: 1% of the population go to the theatre regularly, the same percentage that watch football regularly. Having said that, I do feel that cheaper tickets would make the theatre more widely available.
The Fringe is open to everyone and your left with a smorgasbord of theatre and everyone makes a loss.
Q: How often do you go to the theatre?
A: To be honest, I go to the theatre very irregularly, two to three times a year maybe. I did see David Grieg’s Midsummer last week at the Traverse and really liked it. It was wittily written and well acted, it wasn’t going out to change to world but if people think that theatre is dying because of irrelevance then maybe by doing a romcom he’s actually helping by getting a bigger audience and being more accessible.
Q: So how do you think theatre stands up to more dazzling mediums like film?
A: I don’t think it’s fair to say film is better than theatre, a lot of bad film acting is covered up by excellent editing, in theatre you can’t hide behind anything, especially in intimate theatre where you can see genuinely great acting. It’s a lot harder to act in theatre compared to film. I am interested in pursing film, but I’m not sure of the route. I just got into a new company with new writing with a guy who gets really good reviews, which is exciting, also he’s interested in experimenting with form and ideas.
Q: So how dedicated are you to theatre? If I offered you a million pounds to star in the next Bond, would you do it?
A: Seriously, in an ideal world I would do everything, in a very selfish fashion there’s more exposure in TV and film and in a business where there is no safety net you need to think about that security. I’m more interested in doing really good theatre for less money than crap TV or film for more. In theatre you get an audience reaction readily and you make yourself open and vulnerable on the stage. It’s challenging being that emotionally open but the rewards are great when it works.
Q: What would you like to see on our stages now?
A: More interesting interpretations of Shakespeare, more new writing but it doesn’t have to be set in the now. It could be themes concentrated on 30-40 years ago, I think new writers get too caught up in wanting to make a political point. But I’d like more smaller venues and interesting theatre. But the big problem is money, I was offered to go and work with Chamber Shakespeare again, but for the show at the Fringe it was a year of almost daily rehearsals and it’s impossible to support yourself like that when the financial cushion isn’t there, which is a shame.
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