Staging the Nation

The National Theatre of Scotland has been hosting Staging the Nation, a series of events around the topic of theatre in Scotland. These discussions and events look backwards and forwards in time when considering the state of the theatre maker in Scotland, the role of theatre in the Scottish cultural landscape, and the future of theatre in this country. I have taken part in two events this year and hope to not only attend more events next year but to participate in some way. The discussions are lively and I believe the NTS is sincere in making these useful moments, not just back slapping opportunities.

The first Staging the Nation event I took part in was a few weeks back. I hosted an on line chat about the role of risk in arts programming in very difficult financial times. The conversation didn’t really touch on how the current economic climate would affect the art, but how it would affect the way the theatre and performance is produced. So I discussed questions around funding, independent producers, the need for alternative networks in Scotland (through residencies, etc.) It was not a conversation that was ever going to be resolved, but it was nice to hear from fellow artists who have questions about how we will find ourselves in work in the future.

The last event I took part in was on the 15th of December, a wintery Thursday in Edinburgh at that lavish steel and polished wood behemoth, the Scottish Parliament. This event was created by Scottish theatre veteran and legend David MacLennan, the charming creator of Oran Mor’s incredibly successful A Play, Pie and a Pine series of new plays, and the NTS’s associate director Graham McLaren. The event was created to ask: does Scotland have a nature of dissent? Can theatre ever galvanise the people around a political cause? To this end artists from the 1970′s and 80′s were asked to discuss the legacy of political theatre in Scotland, not just in their day but at the beginning of modern Scottish theatre right through the end of Margaret Thatcher’s “strategic” dismemberment of public subsidies for the arts.

This conversation, and the one preceding it in preparation for the evening’s event, centred around the demise of 7:84, Wildcat, the vigor of radical playwright Tom McGrath, the difficulties of building/mantaining audiences, and the impossibility of justifying political theatre to governmental agencies who need to tick boxes. It was a rich discussion with insights from “the old guard” that helped contextualize my position as a new comer to the Scottish theatre sector. While I have always understood the important legacy of the popular in Scotland it hasn’t been clear how my community of performance art-influenced, continental-minded, liberal, educated, serious naval gazers came to be in so many numbers and with such a high profile in Glasgow. After all the Scottish stage emerged not form a literary tradition but a popular one, developing historically from a rich tradition of panto, cabaret, music hall, popular song, etc.

But in the course of time there is also a notable streak of malcontent that has taken these forms and infused them with political content. Thursday night’s event took a close look at why this infusion happened and why it was so popular with the people and unpopular with the holders of the purse strings. For me, it was interesting to ponder, for the first time, how the closing of so many theatre companies in the 1990′s and naughties resulted in the rise of the fringe sector – the Arches community, as I like to put it. While the obvious answer might be that the end of these companies meant that the new left would rise from the peripheries, I actually think that this legacy has had influence by its absence not its presence in the minds of young artists. That is, there is a bubbling crowd of “emerging” artists who exist in such number, with such ambition, because of two things: the dismantling of these high profile political theatres, which meant funding went toward other kinds of theatre organizations, particularly visual theatre companies, the national ballet, opera, and children’s theatre companies, and festivals/organizations bringing international work. And the other reason was that this generation has emerged under new Labour and it’s remit that art pay for itself, to be of service, to earn its keep. So anyone making political theatre or inclined to do so has been recruited into the education and outreach arms of the funding tree. And those of us who are not, or who do not intend to be of service, work in the funding wilderness and toil away passionately, taking our cue from the recent beneficiaries of funding who do not include, it has to be said, any particularly radical or even overtly political theatre companies. The voice of dissent in my community, however, comes from the same impulse that drove the generation before us to make work despite x, y, and z obstacles. The impulse to face questions creatively is now on the fringe…

This is MacLennan’s thought. He intuited there is no lack of political theatre makers in Scotland. So, from this community he plucked myself, Kieran Hurley, Catrin Evans, Cora Bissett, and Alan Bissett to represent the possibilities for political theatre in the future.

Now, some of you are scratching your heads. Amanda Monfrooe, a political theatre maker? I’ll admit that I was struck by the selection, I’m not sure that’s such an obvious label for me – certainly not compared to the others who were present that night. Asked to make a 3 minute response to the state of, future of, feelings about political theatre in Scotland I was sure to stand out from the others who have established themselves as politically minded SCOTS. And that’s my starting point. I suppose that I was able to distance myself from the proposition a little bit because I’m not native to this place. I come from a place where political theatre died long long ago. Or rather, political theatre started to take on different forms than the agit prop that propelled the National theatre projects of the early 20th century. Or the political theatre of the performance art movement on the 1960′s and 70′s. I suppose I’m of the 1980′s school of political theatre: lament, laugh, condemn, cry, laugh, laugh, laugh, spit, confuse, bow.

That evening my peers presented variously on the topic of being a political artist – some showed their wares with a scene or a political song from a political show. Others discussed what it meant to be political, what it might feel like, how it would be different from the past. And me? I said we can’t be certain we have an answer, or the answer, or their answer – things aren’t as black and white as they used to be. But as long as we stay respectful of the audience’s mind – as long as we don’t manipulate them – we will be vital, stay relevant, stay worthy. We must get off our high horse. There is not horse, high or low. There are people walking. Sleepwalking. All we can do is wake them. Not whisper in their ear with seductive nothings. We must keep them thinking. Keep them responsible. Keep them true to what lies in their hearts – not what lies in ours.

I am a strong believer in this. That is why I value the work an artist like Catrin Evans does above the others. She facilitates people operating outside the theatre to enter the creative space and own the stage. To express themselves. To tell their stories. To realize something about themselves, both in terms of the narrative of their lives but also themselves as creative people. I respect this because it’s not for an audience, the audience is the actor in many ways and if they are generating the meaning the project has then it’s true. More true than anything we could say or do in any of our little shows. But what she does with those people in community projects is what I do in my work. I speak to my worries, my questions, my anxieties, my passions, my fears. I express myself in the truest way I can. And without demanding that the audience understand I open channels through my work in which the audience operate. By occupying those spaces – gaps that must be filled by the individual thinking mind – they own the piece’s meaning. They are the gatekeepers of what is true in the piece. Not me. In this way I am political. And this is what I brought to bare on Thursday night.

The first question after the floor was given over to the audience was from a woman who didn’t like the taste of my offering. She misread my piece for abject nihilism. If art has no meaning and if there is no way for art to make a difference than what is it for? She asked. I answered that it has meaning, it can make a difference but only if and only when the audience make meaning that is true to their worldview and their experience. Just as we cannot know what each individual’s experience is so we cannot tell each individual what their experience should be. What I should have said, however it wasn’t in the spirit of the evening being about political theatre as it was, what I should have said was: why the hell should it?

Why does art have to work to make a difference? Why does it have to be for something? Can it not just be made for its own sake? So this is the flip side of my excitment and absolute pleasure in Thursday’s event. I also believe a good piece of theatre needn’t serve anybody. It doesn’t have to do a goddamn thing. We don’t ask visual art to function, to serve, to produce – why do we ask the same of the theatre? One of the speakers said something like “there were real people in the audience, not theatre people.” And I thought – hang on a minute! When did theatre people become knob headed slaves to the audience? I need an audience, yes, but they need me! We need eachother. I need them to be thinking spectators, they need me to be a thinking creator. I need them to sit there and watch, they need me to stand there and dance. If I didn’t have a mind, a heart, and an ego I wouldn’t produce anything. I’m a real person! They are real people. The point is that I don’t owe them anything. I owe myself respect. For me that results in intelligent pieces of theatre that address my concerns over reality and fiction being blurred, over climate change, my fears about internet infecting our communication skills, the end of humanity at the hands of the invisible machines and systems by which we live – my obligation is to these questions. I am in service to answering them. I’m not in service to anybody else. So, what if art has no meaning and can’t change anything. So fucking what? It’s still worthwhile.

I just think that on that evening we were in a room that would say, “but I prefer if it did.”

So, political theatre maker Amanda Monfrooe “prefers if it did.” But she likes the other work too. She really likes the work that is hard, that is challenging and that I find political because I – ME, AMANDA, YO, MEMEMEMEME – find it political. Maybe no one else will or they will in a different way but because it isn’t patronizing, simplistic, black and white sermonizing theatre. It’s open to me to find myself in it. And that makes it legit.

Legit. I want to make legit work where the audience labours for meaning because I’ve laboured to open the work up to them.