West Yorkshire Playhouse’s season of new work, Transform, is back this year to question what makes great theatre. Subtitled ‘My City, My Leeds’ the project is getting personal to celebrate its roots with performances popping up in unusual spaces across the city, from shopping centres to high rise towers.

I spoke to three of the many artists involved about what they’re bringing to this year’s festival. Helen Goalen and Abbi Greenland of RashDash Theatre were first involved with Transform in 2012 and this year return as an associate company hosting a scratch night for local artists; Alan Lane from Slung Low tells us how his company has been part of Transform as it’s developed over the years; and first-time Transformer Ellie Harrison reveals more about her collaborative, site-based performances, which have taken place in domestic gardens, pubs, clothes shops, derelict churches and roads as well as more conventional theatre spaces…

What kind of work are you creating for the festival?

RashDash: There’ll be some kind of performance element to us hosting the scratch – we’re not sure what yet but it will involve music, song and some weird and wonderful costumes… maybe. We’ll be meeting up with various local artists throughout the week and getting to know them and their work a bit better.

Alan Lane: We are making a show, The Johnny Eck and Dave Toole Show, about Dave Toole, a dancer, and Johnny Eck, the legless Hollywood star of the 1930s. It’s outside in the tilt yard of the Royal Armouries, where they do the jousting. Audiences will sit outside and hear the show through headphones. It’s going to be quite circus-y. Hopefully quite fun. Certainly epic. It, alongside the talents of Dave Toole, features the Oldest Woman in the World and a performance by Ballerina and the Tiny Tiger. Who is a Tiny Tiger.

Ellie Harrison: The Rage Receptacle is an installation for public spaces. For the past three years I’ve been making a sequence of seven projects called The Grief Series. Each part of the series corresponds to a phase of a seven stage grief model. The Rage Receptacle is Part 4 and deals with Anger. Whilst all the projects combine to make the series, each piece very much works on its own. For each part of the series I collaborate with a different artist working in different disciplines. The Rage Receptacle is made in collaboration with sculptor Paula Chambers and architectural designer Bethany Wells. It’s a question of thinking about how an audience move around the space. What they might like to discover and what they might find challenging. It’s also been a process of mining the complex meanings of everyday items. Can the objects we interact with everyday be transformed into sculptures and take on new meanings?

Are there artists or companies who have inspired your practice?

RD: Physically – companies like dot504, rootless root, Gecko and Do Theatre. Music wise – cabaret artists like Meow Meow, Amanda Palmer, and world music with eastern scales, epic harmonies and lots of big drumming.

AL: Dave Toole has inspired my practice, really, Google him now – he’s extraordinary. I was very inspired by the opening of last year’s Paralympics and the work of the directors Jenny Sealey and Bradley Hemmings. And beyond that Robert Le Page, Robbie Williams and Amy Letman [curator of Transform].

EH: Bobby Baker’s playful approach to difficult topics has had a huge impact on my work. Whilst The Grief Series talks about difficult things, it does so in an accessible and playful way. Turner prize-winning artist Jeremy Dellers’s work has been a huge inspiration for this project, combining contemporary art with an openness and warmth.

What does theatre mean to you?

RD: An experience that’s live, transient and unrepeatable. When it’s at its best it moves you deeply and lingers in your head. Something that speaks to your body as well as your brain – your whole being. Something that speaks about the world we live in now.

AL: Coming together with your fellow man to try and further understand the relentless joy and misery of being alive in this moment right now. Also blowing stuff up and playing music at the right moment so that people feel proper sad.

EH: Oddly enough it’s not a word I use all that often. There is such a wealth of different performance practices, some of which can be housed within a theatre building and some of which can’t and shouldn’t be because it would rob the work of what makes it wonderful. I think the key is to see a greater level of communication between people making different kinds of performance, from plays to performance art. I hope that Transform Festival is helping to bring these different people together and that audiences will see something they might not have tried before.

What’s it like taking inspiration from a city when creating new work?

RD: Because Leeds is the city we’re based in and have lived in for years, she is always part of process in some way. It’s not as explicit as thinking about Leeds and then making a show. We feel like our identity as a company is wrapped up in the experience, sights and smells of Leeds.

The scratch will take place in the front of house space, or – The Playground – as it’s being known for Transform. There’s no captive audience and hopefully the bar will be busy and buzzing. Its not an an usual space for performance, but a different kind of audience and atmosphere to tackle.

AL: Every city is different so we spend a lot of time working out the best type of show for that particular city. We are lucky that Leeds is our home city, we’ve wanted to make this type of show here for a while. Leeds is going through a real boost at the moment – Trinity Shopping Centre opened recently to much national applause, the City Council is much more robust and confident than similar city councils – but it still has issues reconciling this bright future with its past. That’s very interesting to explore.

EH: I think it’s something I always do and as I live in Leeds, it is often this city
that informs the work I make. Bethany [Wells] remarked that what we have made draws on Leeds as a landscape in quite a nuanced way and actually, perhaps the fact that I live here makes me less sensitive to that. I have a huge amount of civic pride for Leeds given that I grew up down south and now I can’t imagine moving anywhere else. Without clinging to the cliché that people are friendlier up north, there is an honesty and pragmatism here, whether people are being nice or not and I really value that.

What can audiences expect from your performance?

RD: A trio of weird women playing some fun tunes… But we’re making it all this week so it’s as much a mystery to us as yet…

AL: A Freak Show gone wrong. A tribute gone wrong. And hopefully by the end they’ll know who Dave Toole and Johnny Eck are and why they are important.

EH: That sense of the live, of sharing space and time with the performer and the rest of the crowd is something film and television just can’t compete with. For this reason I’m interested in how theatre can make ‘liveness’ central to the experience in the way that football and live music does.

A moment of quiet self reflection as a break from the bustle of the city. But different audiences will have different expectations. There will be people who have seen the work in the brochure or are familiar with The Grief Series and they will have a completely different set of expectations to an accidental audience who just happen across it on the street. I hope it will be some people’s first experience of installation, whether they are young children, people who might not experience arts activity, or seasoned theatre goers who are feeling adventurous and want to try something new.

For details of all three performances and the rest of the Transform programme – and to buy tickets – visit http://www.wyp.org.uk/what’s-on/2013/transform-my-leeds-my-city/.

Image 1: RashDash

Image 2: Ellie Harrison’s Ettiquette of Grief

Image 3: Alan Lane

Here is double roundup of the top theatre videos from February and March. You can also see all the videos on our YouTube playlist on the A Younger Theatre Youtube Channel where you’ll also find some exclusive videos from The Book of Mormon creators.

1. The Royal Shakespeare Company: Hamlet Video Trailer

At just 36 seconds long this video for David Farr’s Hamlet by the Royal Shakespeare Company is intense. Directed by Farr himself and produced by Dust House (who are becoming a regular feature in these video round ups), the focus of the trailer is the setting of a fencing tournament. It’s simplistic in presentation, but very effective as a short trailer, including some slightly Star Wars inspired text for the show title (or is that just us?).

2. West Yorkshire Playhouse: Doctor Faustus

The West Yorkshire Playhouse and Citizen Theatre have created a creepy video trailer for their joint production of Doctor Faustus. With clown-like features you might mistake this video for The Joker in Batman. What menacing face paint. A recurring theme in this roundup of videos is slow motion which features in this trailer. Is it overused? Perhaps. But does it work? Oh yes.

3. The Unicorn Theatre: 1001 Nights

This trailer for the Unicorn Theatre’s production of 1001 Nights in association with Transport is full of mesmerising images and beauty, but it also has some faults. The voiceover and music is unquestionably good, taking you into the world of the play and when the footage shows more visual elements (the sheet blowing up for example) I tingle with joy. Some of the footage is weaker, scenes from the play playing against the narration don’t quite work, but otherwise what a wonderful video.

4. The Royal Court Theatre and Fuel: The Victorian in the Wall

How important is narrative in a video trailer for a show? In the case of The Royal Court and Fuel’s The Victorian in the Wall the narrative of the play, cleverly delivered by an actor in character, is central to the video. It’s funny and features three men singing with a piano (what’s not to love?) with some amusing lyrics about knocking down a wall. It also throws into question the purpose of video trailers and the limitations of theatre. Can you always show everything you want to in a video? One of the cast is missing so they pop a photo of her in the corner of the video, it’s cheap, but funny.

5. English National Ballet: Branding relaunching

The English National Ballet have a new artistic leader and a fresh and edgy new brand thanks to the folk at Brand New Meme. Launching the new brand came with a collaboration with fashion extraordinaire Vivienne Westwood. Talk about bringing ballet into the contemporary world. Despite being uploaded in January, we just can’t get enough of this behind the scenes look at the photo shoot with Westwood and some of ENB’s principle dancers. It’s gorgeous.

6. Bryony Kimmings: The Fanny Song

Warning: This video contains strong language and comedy related to the female genitalia and some readers may find it slightly offence and utterly hilarious. You have been suitably warned!

How many different words are there for the bits and pieces down below on our female readers? Quite a few according to Bryony Kimmings with her new song The Fanny Song. Featuring participants, vaginas and some brilliant descriptions, this video may not be for everyone, but it certainly shows that sometimes we don’t have to be serious. With 15,000 views in less than a month, I think it’s safe to say Kimmings has a hit!

7. National Theatre: NT Future – Transforming the National Theatre

When you watch this video from the National Theatre on how they’re shaping the future of the building, with new facilities and open access to audiences I challenge you not to feel a little bit excited or moved. Using footage from well known productions, with a brilliant voice over and artworks from the new developments; it feels inspiring. Which is almost what the National Theatre want you to feel, that and empowered to invest in their future which will surely be our future too.

8. Pants On Fire: Theatrical Advertising Space

From funding the National Theatre to getting a unique advertising slot in a theatre company’s production, this video from Pants On Fire is intriguing to say the least. We’re featuring this video, not for the content but rather the idea behind the video creation. Pants On Fire are offering a business the chance to have their own advert, devised by the company, inserted into their next show as an ad break. Using the companies talent of music, physical theatre, puppetry and fun they want businesses to invest in their show and receive a live advert mid-performance. It’s a neat idea, will it work? Who knows.

What are your highlights of videos the past few months? Leave a comment and make sure you look at the other videos featured in our round up of Best Theatre Videos from December.

“I look back at some of the many great reviews we had as a young company,” reflects Scott Graham, Co-Artistic Director of Frantic Assembly, whose Beautiful Burnout is currently touring nationally, “and I know that if we were to put on that exact show now we would be slaughtered.” In the eighteen years since its inaugural production, Frantic Assembly has become a key figure amongst the group of theatre companies it once looked up to. “Frantic” is now a byword for theatrical fusion of movement and text, and the company has achieved considerable international success. Though he admits to being something of an establishment, Graham is wary of the term, because “that’s a scary place to find yourself. For a while, it was so exciting being considered the new kids, this young exciting company. The fear of not being talked of in those terms is that you’ve reached the top of the hill and that the rest of it is downhill.” I spoke to Graham in the middle of the tour and found a man showing little sign of burning out.

The show is a collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland, which follows a group of aspiring boxers through training and conflict, at home and in the ring. “At the moment,” Graham tells me, “the country is buzzing about the application and talent of sportsmen.” He is keen to stress, however, that “if you are making a show about sport, don’t just make a normal show and then tack on the sport element. Learn from how sport operates; learn from how it gets that level of commitment from its practitioners.” This pursuit of the truth about boxing was intrinsic to the rehearsal process. “We ran the rehearsals like a boxing gym. The rehearsal room was just full of weights, skipping ropes, punch bags, boxing gloves… it just didn’t feel like a rehearsal room – it actually captured that boxing mentality. That really served the show well, because it created this camaraderie and this intensity, because you were always aspiring to do what real boxers do, which meant you couldn’t moan about being tired, you couldn’t moan about being hurt a bit because they wouldn’t.” The boxing coach of Beautiful Burnout is typically fanatical, with a fierce grip over his protégés. Is Graham as strict with his performers? He laughs. “There’s an element of that, I think – when there’s need for it.”

The cast of Beautiful Burnout is not only new to boxing, but – like all performers with whom Frantic work – is not made up of trained dancers. This is key to the company’s developmental work and performance. What Graham likes about working physically with actors is that “when you ask them to do something they don’t know whether they can do it, so there’s always an element of fear about the process, or certainly bravery – whereas a dancer knows they can do it and what they deliver is a perfect facsimile of what you’ve asked. But with actors, there’s something slightly skewed, that we hadn’t thought of yet, which is really exciting. Once they do get there physically, they can then draw on their skills as an actor and give it such depth. It’s based on things you don’t know; that movement, because they’re not sure of it, has that fragile quality – its alive, it’s not something that’s rehearsed to death.”

Similarly, playwright Bryony Lavery knew nothing about boxing when she was approached to join the project. “It was crucial that Bryony wrote Beautiful Burnout, because it really was about looking at boxing with fresh eyes.” When it came to boxing, Lavery “was ambivalent. She had her issues when she went into this world and she’s come out of it with those issues changed – with her thoughts changed in both directions. She was more cynical about some aspects and incredibly warm about some other aspects.”

Frantic is used to punching above its weight – Graham and Co-Artistic Director Steven Hoggett were once English graduates trying to make physical theatre in the style of companies like DV8 and Volcano. What’s to be gained from this? “I think it does bring a fresh perspective, because nobody knows what the answer is.” Just as Lavery tackled boxing from the outside, Graham believes Frantic has been able to develop theatre on its own terms, without being confined to a house style. “This doesn’t always happen, but I have seen it happen, where companies have come out of an educational establishment and they have their style… and they believe that the work they create must exist within this style.  And I think that’s really dangerous.” Their lack of formal training, Graham believes, “meant that we could be inspired by lots of different things and move in slightly different directions, and there was no shame in that.”

That’s not to say it was easy starting out. “For the first year and a half I think we earned £40 a week, and that was hard. But we made sure we were living somewhere where the cost of living was very low, which meant we could do that. Also we didn’t try to get jobs elsewhere; the company we formed was committed to each other and the company.” Graham has no illusions about the difficulties young people face trying to get a foot in the stage door today, admitting “It’s tricky. At the moment. Of course it’s tricky, but I don’t think it’s impossible.” Frantic’s founders worked hard to overcome the “invisible barrier” themselves, since “we were all working class kids at university – that was enough of a culture shock. To then find ourselves working in theatre, that was another culture shock. It can seem a little bit comfortable with itself from the outside; it can be quite impenetrable.”

Graham is critical of the “mystery that surrounds [theatre] and a lot of the way it’s spoken about,” working hard to “consider every aspect of our work and make it as open as possible.” Frantic engages effectively with young people through its Learn and Train programmes (including Ignition, a physical project aimed at young men with little arts experience) and provides comprehensive education packs. “We’re not precious about the processes that we use and what we’re very clear about is: the processes we use to make one thing could and should be used by you to make something else. They’re just tools.” As for cracking the industry, his advice is plain: “Be prepared to sacrifice… get involved and be nice. One of the things we said to people when we first started touring was make sure you’re nice to them. It sounds really cheesy, but we meant it; make sure you’re remembered, make sure you’re on your best behaviour, make sure you say please and thank you. It’s so simple but it makes a massive difference.”

In some ways, it’s easier for young practitioners to experiment – as Graham says, “all of your reviews are given in context of your development”. The challenge for an establishment – who have a higher reputation and budget at stake – is to not be too, well, establishment. Graham acknowledges that with success, “it is harder to take risks [but] that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it – it’s a great reminder that you still have to.” He has written that the athletes of Beautiful Burnout are driven by “glorious aspirations and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow”. What’s the gold for Frantic Assembly? “Possibly the most wonderful part of what we’ve achieved is the influence that we can have, or the guidance that we can give, to aspiring theatre-makers. That’s how we started… we were lucky enough to be taken seriously by people around us and nurtured by them.” Ultimately though, “I don’t know what the pot of gold is, and I think that’s quite healthy. I never really know where we’re heading, I don’t know what the end product is. But thank God for that, because then if I got it that would be the end.”

Beautiful Burnout tours until 1 December 2012, visiting West Yorkshire Playhouse, Northern Stage, Nuffield Southampton and Hull Truck Theatre. For tickets and more information visit www.franticassembly.co.uk.

Image credit: Frantic Assembly

This week was the London opening of Loserville. A brand new home-grown musical, it seemed like it could’ve been the show everyone had been waiting for. So why, instead of rave reviews and tweets about how great it is, has a Twitter storm and media furore emerged?

I was struck by some of the points raised in a recent blog by theatre critic Mark Shenton. In the blog, Shenton highlights the discrepancy in age between some of the reviewers and the show’s main characters. It seems no great surprise that a show about nerdy teenagers with a pop soundtrack isn’t appealing to reviewers who are mainly 30 and over. He does mention that BA students at ArtsEd weren’t keen on Loserville either, but I don’t think this fairly represents the younger generation’s viewpoint. I have quite a few friends who were so excited by the production when it was first announced that they went to see it at the West Yorkshire Playhouse – although this excitement did seem to have been at least partially due to the fact that a member of Busted, James Bourne, was one of the Loserville writers.

People have also been objecting to the advertising strategy, with the slogan “if you love Glee, you’ll like Loserville“ seen as cashing in on other genres and successful shows. I found the comments on Shenton’s blog interesting. The first was “How can you possibly fit all of the different sit coms and series into one fantastic show? For example the big bang theory and glee are very different yet they advertise loserville in same bracket which just doesn’t make sense.” I’d argue that, in fact, this makes perfect sense – the marketing team knew their target audience of 20-somethings and teenagers who spend a lot of time watching channels such as E4, home of both The Big Bang Theory and Glee. Most of us who have been students have watched that channel for hours, so it doesn’t surprise me at all that they talked about those shows together.

I found myself getting defensive over the fact people seem upset that a show is appealing to a younger audience and marginalising the older generations, who do tend to make up the bulk of theatre-goers. This doesn’t strike me as a mistake on the show’s part but a good move in securing future generations.

I will finish with a quote Shenton cited from a blog by performer Matthew Malthouse who points out that Loserville “isn’t perfect, but it is a new fresh piece of theatre. With a young talented cast, and some of the most passionate dancing I have seen in years. I find that hard to criticise.”

Image via Loserville the Musical.