I have to say that I walked into this piece, a one-woman, one-dog show from Brighton-based artist Victoria Melody, with some trepidation. The intimate venue, slightly interactive format and prospect of one performer (plus hound) all conspired to fill me with a sense of dread; greeted at the door by the affable Melody and her co-star, the eponymous basset hound Major Tom, I waited for her to suddenly switch into a heightened performance mode, or maybe just make her dog perform tricks for an hour. As it turned out, Major Tom was subtle, hugely engaging, and one of the most enjoyably stimulating experiences I’ve had in the theatre for a while: a face-hurts-from-smiling show.

In Melody’s work, she immerses herself in the subcultures and niche activities of England, participating in various events and recording her experiences to turn them into live performance – for previous shows she’s been a pigeon racer and a northern soul dancer. For Major Tom, Melody entered her dog (a lovely wrinkly thing she reckons “looks like an old Tory”) into a series of amateur dog competitions before eventually landing the big one, Crufts. In solidarity with her canine friend, she then put herself under the harsh scrutiny of the judges by entering the Mrs England beauty pageant.

Melody recounts these experiences with the aid of video recordings, a few costume changes and some demonstration with the hilariously unwilling Major, who spent most of the show curled up on his bed or sniffing around a lady’s handbag in the front row. The multimedia elements and minimal theatrical effects are completely cohesive, and the narrative structure of the work gives it purpose throughout (presumably thanks in part to her dramaturg, Paul Hodson). Acutely observed and delivered with warmth, it’s a story about the pursuit of perfection and victory, and how what seems trivial to the outsider can become an obsession to the enthusiast.

What works about Major Tom is that it’s perfectly balanced – whilst many of the lines had the audience laughing out loud, it’s by no means played purely as a stand-up routine or variety act. Equally, the politically-loaded or ethically questionable aspects of the institutions she describes are implied without being hammered home too heavily. Simply presenting the pairing of these two competitions – one of which judges the breeding, training and grooming of its entrants against strict criteria, and the other being a dog show – is enough of a statement, and Melody lets her audience think for themselves.

Melody and Major are currently travelling the UK together before settling for a month at Edinburgh’s Summer Hall this August, a venue which produced some of the most exciting and talked-about works of last year’s fringe, including Big Mouth and La Merda (The S**t). Whilst she may have a challenge drawing in audiences for a regional tour, this unique show is surely set to build momentum and become a festival favourite.

Major Tom is touring until Wednesday 26 June. For more information, see Victoria Melody’s website.

This month Emma Jane Denly speaks to Tom Penn of Little Bulb Theatre, who are currently in residence at the Battersea Arts Centre. She plays devil‘s advocate with the question of music’s purpose in theatre…

TP: Music is one of the most powerful means of communication we possess. It has the power to overwhelm and to be delicate, to sentimentalise and to be ironic. When used with due care and attention, it has the faculty to transcend immediate thought, and access a deeper, often surprisingly emotional, response. An enormous amount of my time is spent accompanied by music, be it the ‘soundtrack to my life’ that happens to be buzzing around inside my head at the time, or the more tangible mp3 player, squeezing the same old songs into my ears as I board the 345 to Peckham. Why? Because I enjoy my life more when there is music playing. Subsequently I find it difficult, perhaps impossible, to imagine a reason I would have for not including music in my work in theatre.

EJD: Perhaps there’s a case for arguing that music has the power to distract as well as complement, in both your own life and indeed in theatrical productions. Pick the wrong song and the effect can be as small as creating a slightly jarring scene on-stage that doesn’t fit with the rest of the show or as large as being totally alienating for an audience. You wake up and accidentally play one of Enya’s less upbeat tracks through your headphones: rest of the day is then potentially overshadowed by a sense of depressive doom (no offence intended to Enya). Play a rock song in the middle of a show, and all delicacy is sent crashing to the floor. If these effects are intended, then fair enough, but isn’t all music subjective? How can you make an entire audience react in the same way?

TP: I’m not sure that you can, but I certainly don’t see that as a consideration to be taken only with music. I would suggest that any aspect of any theatre show will be viewed subjectively, and therefore it is the theatre-maker’s responsibility to understand and appreciate this, whilst using everything they have at their disposal in order to best serve the moment. When approaching a new piece of work, you come armed with your full toolkit, and you try your best to use those tools wisely. Music is just one of the means we have with which to communicate, and is as valuable to the process as any other. It comes hand in hand with the text, or the movement, or the design – there is no reason one should be separated of given greater significance than the others. If given careful thought and artistically driven, the music will form as vital part of any narrative or atmosphere as any other discipline.

EJD: Do you think then that this kind of music is different to the “conventional” type – and I use this phrase carefully, meaning only music that is not intended for narrative effect – or whether it is the same as something that we can buy or listen to on its own terms? It’s almost as though you are implying that music in theatre is a precise and exact science (the same way perhaps lighting or choreography can be viewed as such), which could make it seem artificial – or failing that then at least oppressed in some way. Do you think that theatre-music is its own art-form – or could it be listened to in the same way as Queen, Fairport Convention or – yes, I’m going there – Enya?

TP: I don’t think that an exact science exists for making music or any kind of theatre. I think there are guidelines available if you want them, but once you get past a certain point, you’re out there on your own. You try something different, something new, in the hope that it will be what you want it to be, and then as long as you learn a little bit each time, you’ll be ready to have another go soon enough. As for whether theatre music is its own art form, I’m not so certain that it can be categorised that neatly. Yes, when used for a specific purpose in a piece of theatre, that music must be precisely what was asked for and needed in that moment, whether newly composed or a well-known classic. But that’s not to say it doesn’t retain individual worth when removed from context. Take Kneehigh‘s ‘Don John’ Soundtrack – I can’t get enough of those tracks still, however many years later. I know the scores and soundtracks to countless films and shows I haven’t seen. I adore the music, and that’s it. Ultimately, in the context of the show or film itself, if that music does not serve the very moment for which it was intended, then it hasn’t fulfilled its purpose, and the final product was probably weaker for it. But there’s nothing to stop me from enjoying it separately – much like I can be satisfied, impressed and even moved by the way natural lighting occurs within a particular environment at any point in my day, music serves a multitude of purposes. Its use in theatre should be treated with the same thought and precision as every other aspect of the production, and when it works, it has the ability to colour and to lift that moment to an altogether new height. The rest of the time, it should just be worth listening to.

EJD: So theatre-music is perhaps just made to fit its definition by the selection process: the artistry lies in the ability of the theatre-maker to select and refine a piece of music for a particular theatrical moment that is utterly appropriate. I’m sure the wave of other companies who take music in theatre very seriously – Kneehigh, RashDash, Third Angel – would be inclined to agree.

Little Bulb Theatre’s Orpheus runs at BAC from 16 April – 11 May, and Tom is performing his solo work at Cambridge Junction’s SAMPLED Festival on Sunday 5 May.

Image: Headphone Throw Pillow

I have a confession to make: a few years ago, I flirted with stand-up comedy. Theatremaking is collaboration; I love that in the job, but part of me was ready to speak in my voice for a while, unmediated.

I had a few routines I was proud of – I remember one about Sigmund Freud publishing his Oedipus theory and going home for family Christmas to find that his dad has hidden all the knives and forks for fear of being killed, so the family eats their turkey with plastic cutlery. It always got laughs: it had defined characters and a tight structure, but after performing it even five times, I was bored. Beyond the mechanics of the joke and the fun of riding its rhythm, there was little going on under the surface.

In one of his more grandiose moments, the late Steve Jobs said that, whatever we put our minds to, we should mean to “put a dent in the universe”. I stopped doing stand-up is because ultimately I had little to say through comedy about the world.  Even if the audience laughed, all I could manage was a shrug. The comedian Daniel Kitson has talked about this on stage. In his 2006 show, Weltanschauung, he says that if an audience laughs for the wrong reasons, such as taking a piece of irony at face value, then its laughter is “as piercing to him as thrown fruit”.

I saw Kitson a couple of weeks ago at Battersea Arts Centre, workshopping a new set, After the Beginning, Before the End. He starts an international tour in a few weeks’ time, and last month he junked the entire set he’d been working on. On stage, he sat at a desk and read from notes. Parts of the show had an assured rhythm, other parts were tentative. A few times he repeated bits, playing with the composition of individual sentences, trying to find “the comedic key to a locked door”. At the end, he talked about what he wants the show to be, and what it isn’t yet. I can’t say any more about that because he asked the audience not to, but he wanted his show to be more than just gags. He wanted to find the danger again. On his website, he goes into more detail: “I’ve been waiting to have the idea for this show for weeks, for months. A space held open in my head waiting for the idea. For months. I’ve done previews and I’ve booked the tour and I’ve stared at the internet and I’ve made chicken and I’ve tried not to worry. But the idea has not come and I have worried. I’ve worried and doubted and waited more and more and more. But then today, having dropped my dad off at the train station and met my friends for some coffee, whilst driving home to write this (very overdue) brochure copy – dreading the thought of heaving half lies and optimistic promises into something vaguely intriguing but not developmentally restrictive – halfway home, it happened. Somewhere between East London and South London – It arrived. The Idea. Just like that. Like a child, late home from school, oblivious to the worry and the panic and the phone calls. It just walked in and sat down like it wasn’t even a big deal. So now I’m typing this in my bedroom because the boy who lives next door is playing the James Bond theme on what I assume to be a trumpet. And you have to trust me. Two hours ago I didn’t have the idea. Now I do. And it’s going to be good.”

I’m fascinated by this idea of the turn in the road, the moment that you commit as an artist to putting yourself in danger every time you make something, and not putting anything into the world that you don’t love or that hasn’t scared you.

In a few weeks, I’m seeing another comedian I admire, Louis CK, perform in London. After years of stringing together jokes about tourists and the weather, the second stage of his career has been one of the most remarkable in the history of stand-up comedy. Each year, CK writes and tours an 80-minute set, and at the end of the year, he records it, releases it on his website for $5, and retires the entire set, except for its strongest joke, which he’ll use to start next year’s set, so that everything that follows has to be even better. Explaining his approach a few years ago, CK said that, for him: “…the goal of comedy is to just laugh, which is a really high-hearted thing, [a] visceral connection and reaction. And any time I take laughs away… I have to replace it with something at least that high… it can’t just be interesting. It has to be ‘holy shit!’ one way or the other: ‘holy shit, that’s funny!’ or ‘holy shit, that kind of scared me’. I’ve been interested in scaring people too because it sort of runs by some of the same rules as laughing. Or ‘oh my God, I really feel that’. Or ‘what the fuck is this? I don’t understand this’. These are all heightened responses and I have to be getting one of those.”

Watching Daniel Kitson perform stand-up is the reason Johnny Vegas stopped performing. And watching Louis CK, I realise that I wrote maybe one joke that came close to what he’s talking about. In many ways, a life in the theatre is an insane choice for an adult to make. Humans have always told stories, but there are faster ways to respond to the world than writing and rehearsing a play, mediums that reach wider audiences and economic models that make more sense.

You can’t know what artistic directors want: there are always trends and ‘me too’ productions, but what anyone really wants is to be blown away by something new, and there’s no map for that. The only way to make that dent is to accept that you’re rolling the dice with your career and go all in: scare yourself.

If you’re going to go down, it will have been fighting.

Image: Felipe Avello Presenta

We love a bit of puppetry, we love a bit of illustration, and we love a bit of Battersea Arts Centre, which is why we are offering you the chance to win tickets to see The Paper Cinema’s Odyssey on Friday 15 February! Read the blurb below to learn a bit more about the show – it sounds pretty amazing if you ask us - or scroll down to enter.

The Paper Cinema’s Odyssey
14 Feb – 9 Mar 7.30pm (Sat matinees 2.30pm)
Battersea Arts Centre
Tickets £15, £10 concs

The Paper Cinema’s Odyssey returns to Battersea Arts Centre after a highly successful national tour.

Raging storms and supernatural forces prevail over one man’s almighty quest to get home. Homer’s cornerstone of literature is vividly told with beautiful illustration and masterful puppetry. Cinematic projection and cunning tricks transform a suitcase full of cut-out paper puppets into an array of living characters and striking landscapes. A silent film is created before your eyes, set to a captivating live score from exceptional musicians.

www.bac.org.uk

Enter The Competition:
Fill in the form below and submit it by 4.00pm on Monday 11 February.