Is the personal still political?

I have been re-reading 'Conference of the Birds'; the book that charts Peter Brook's journey into Africa in the 1970's with a troupe of actors; the aim being to discover a universal theatrical language that could cross cultural and linguistic barriers. It is thrilling book to read in 2013 to see now what Brook was trying to achieve and what indeed has been achieved.  At the time of his journey, experimental theatre was still in it's inception. In Britain, there had been a paradigm shift within traditional theatre with John Osborne's 'Look Back in Anger' in 1956.  The experimental work of Boal and Artaud for example, were not to begin influencing work here until the late sixties/early seventies when art began to forge with political awakening; Women's movement, Black Liberation, the politics of socialism underpinning a notion of equality for all.  Companies such as Welfare State and 7:84, Women's Theatre Group (now Sphinx) that placed their work firmly within a political context began to emerge.

It seems to me that we writers and theatre-makers now live in a time where daring to dare has become a much more personalised activity. The daring is personal.  My writing always starts from the personal.  There is something I am wrestling with, trying to resolve, challenging a personal status quo.  The daring does not come from a committed involvement in a political movement or belief and I wonder about the impact of that on my play-writing and theatre making.  Are I able to write, create work that is (borrowing from Jeanette Winterson) 'wide and bold'?

Most discussions about the Arts, whatever their starting point, eventually turn back to economics, particularly in these straitened times.  I wonder how we garner wider public support for the notion of Arts subsidy?  Would our case be stronger if those not involved in the industry could understand the purpose of theatre as political as well as personal and see evidence of that.  

I am here in Wooda alone and trying to forge a new piece of work from my bumbling around in the Cornish countryside.  It is hardly as arduous as the journey taken by Brook's troupe but I like to think there is some legacy from Brook in my approach and I am trying to be brave and to dare. Charlotte Vincent will come next week to work with me.  There is an argument that says there are certain questions we dare not to ask without the support of another person, so I look forward to a new phase of daring.

Things that need to be said

The Sun newspaper has always been vile.  Today is the nadir of that vileness.  The front page shows a Page 3 style photograph of Reeva Steenkamp, the woman shot by Oliver Pistorius.  There is a bold headline script ion next to the photograph of the number of times he shot her.  It is a literary form of the snuff movie.  Within 24 hours of her death it has been framed as masturbation fodder.  There is so much to unpick about this, firstly the lack of respect for Reeva Steenkamp (I keep writing her name as the Sun gave it only as 'Pistorius's lover) as a human being who has lost her life.

The circumstances of her death are yet to be proved but it may be that her death wasn't a random accident but the result of police describe as a 'domestic incident'.  In other words another death of a woman at the hands of another violent man.  This in itself is horrific enough but the reporting of it brings with it a whole other fresh layer of horror.

There are various initiatives at the moment to try and bring violence (sexual, physical, psychological) against women and girls to the table, to try and create collective cocern at what is happening to women world-wide, to find a voice for that concern.  The attitudinal tide that allows the violence, condones the violence, encourages the violence has to be stemmed.  I would ask that we all turn our minds to the task, to challenge where we can, seak out where we can, vote where we can, write where we can, dance, sing and shout where we can.  This de-humanising of women of Reeva Steenkamp serves none of us. None of us.

Why I don't like what I don't like

I am here at Wooda Farm in North Cornwall. I won their annual arts award which provides a small bursary, a cottage to live in and a studio to work in.  I am here to research and develop a new play called "Can I Start Again Please" which will be my next solo performance work.  I have never had the luxury of time such as this.  I am able to lean into the time, read, reflect and think.  In support of that, I am reading the words of other playwrights, not just the plays they have written but also their reflections on the writing process.  I am currently reading "Writing in Restaurants" by David Mamet.  One essay really stood out for me.  It articulated something important and helped me understand why I am so often frustrated when watching theatre and live performance.  He said this:

The play is a quest for a solution. As in our dreams, the law of psychic economy operates.  In our dreams we do not seek answers which our conscious (rational) mind is capable of supplying, we seek answers to those questions which the conscious mind is incompetent to deal with. 

So with drama, if the question posed is one which can be answered rationally e.g. how does one fix a car or should white people be nice to black people - our enjoyment of the drama is incomplete - we feel diverted but not fulfilled.  Only if the question posed is one whose complexity and depth renders it unsusceptible to rational examination does the dramatic treatment seem to us appropriate and the dramatic solution enlightening.

I particularly like the phrase 'we feel diverted but not fulfilled'.  We live in difficult times, hard times and writing should match or 'enlighten' that hardship. I believe it is the role of the artist and the role of statutory funding to support the endeavour. I want to go into war with words when I write, I want to force them to express the unexpressible and to say the unsayable.  I don't want to see (or create) fluffy fly-on-the-wall, style over substance, aesthetically pleasing but flimsy on the content, theatre.  This is not the time to be writing and creating work that essentially drugs the audience by providing low level fantasy content. We need to be waking up our audience, energising and, as Mr Mamet said, enlightening them.  Fighting talk eh? Maybe this is the opening salvo in my war.

Remembrance 2012

I am listening to the remembrance service on the radio.  I am remembering a lot these days.  I was always taken, as a child, to the remembrance service held in the Old Steine here in Brighton.  The family would walk from home. (I like to think my sister and I wore matching dresses and had white socks pulled up to the knees.  I like to think we were wearing our poppies with pride). My dad had served in Burma in the Second World War.  I saw photographs and so I know it is true.  One of the photographs had him sitting, in uniform, surrounded by flies but I don't know any details of his experience.  I do know that he joined up to get away from the life of poverty and violence he was living.  His father was a drunk and his mother chronically ill. After his mother died he cut his father out of his life.  I remember (I like to think that I was about 5) the doorbell to our house being rung, this was a momentous event in itself as no one ever visited, no one was ever invited.  There was an unknown woman (I like to think of her looking like Rose from Brighton Rock but I didn't ever see her).  She said she was the wife of my dad's father and had come to tell my dad that his father had died.  She wasn't invited in (I like to think the door was slammed in her face but I didn't witness that).  I do know the visit unsettled the household, the past came for a visit and was turned away. 

The commentator for the Remembrance Service uses the term 'those who were lost' a lot, meaning of course those who were killed in action, who died because of conflict.  My dad didn't die but today as I hold the two minute silence I think he was most definitely 'lost'.  His heart kept beating but he lost his soul. Or maybe it was already lost or on the wane or never really found and the war years compounded the loss, gave him an identity within which to contain his nothingness.

I don't know if my dad is alive or not.  I haven't had any meaningful contact with any of my family since leaving home at 15.  Running away.  I ran away.  Middle of the night.  Suitcase packed.  Fight or flight.  He was an abusive man.  He and my mother found each other in cruelty. 

Sexual abuse is all over the news at the moment and it is making me remember all over again.  I have never forgotten but the current grand narrative is forcing flashbacks into my mind, my body doesn't feel like my own.  I take gulping breaths and try to stretch out my body, take the risk of making it vulnerable by attending my yoga class, sitting in a mediation, trying to keep hold of the soft place in my heart, trying not to feel that it is happening all over again.  My teeth are chattering as I write this because the fear of telling is still so very powerful.  I can hear his voice in my head and feel his hand on my body. I can smell tea on his breath and remember the manicured hands.  He was so very proud of having risen above manual work. I remember my mum turning her face to the wall when I returned after leaving and tried to tell what had happened.  My mum said 'you fucking little bitch' and turned her face to the wall.  My sister refuses to speak to me.  I have no one to corroborate my story and very little physical evidence, such as photographs, of my life before 15.  I wonder sometimes whether I exist.

Everything is jumbled at the moment out there in the world of news.  Is the story about the abuse happening or about how it was covered up?  What do we remember?  What are we allowed to remember?  Today we are given permission to remember but only within certain parameters.  How reliable is anyone's testimony?  How valid is it?  We, as a society, are nowhere in coming to terms with the scale of abuse that took place and is still taking place.  It is difficult because memory, the kind of memory that journalists love, that of dates and times and places and actions, is as a slippery fish for abuse survivors.  We cannot remember just because permission has now been given to.  We cannot remember when we know that only a certain type of remembering is allowed.  We remember, or rather I remember in fits and starts, in flashes of colour and smells and sensations. 

I understand that Lord McAlpine was innocent of that which he was accused and I truly have empathy with how awful it must have been for him but wouldn't it have lovely if his response had been to say

' In trying to get to the truth about the terrible atrocities perpetrated on children, I understand there will be casualities and I, unfortunately, have been one of them.  However this should not distract from the main issue.  I think the BBC was at fault in allowing lazy journalism to flourish but I defend their right to make mistakes when trying to unpick such a historically complex issue.  All power to the elbows of those who are trying to bring justice to the victims.  I am big enough and strong enough to survive this slight dent to my character.  I have everything on my side to be able to do that.  The survivors of abuse did not and do not.  They are the story'.

Edinburgh 2012 (5)

Two more shows to go...my time here has just got better and better.  The reviews have been positive and, as the Festival progressed, more intelligent, more understanding of the intention of the piece.

I had a thought too, the title and form of my next piece.  I am excited. 

I am also broke.  Being here has cost about £8000 and the revenue from ticket sales has no where near matched this.  I have been aggravated by how so much resource seems to flow to schemes such as HOUSE, receiving £660,000 from Arts Council England to help promote and encourage small to middle scale touring.  There is a website, have a look.  I was particularly aggravated at an open meeting they hosted here that had a panel of six none of whom were artists.  Where are we in all this?  Surely the art is the life blood..from which everything else flows...without people like me making work, spending thousands of pounds to bring the show to Edinburgh, the venues would have nothing to programme and yet we are excluded from representing our views. I will watch with interest what happens with HOUSE.  All the artists who have put there details onto the website...let us see at the end of the first year how many have been successful in having their work placed into venues.  Is it many or just a few?  What type of work is being programmed and why?  All of a sudden it seems the Arts Council are funding a scheme that supports the notion of market-led theatre. I had always thought ACE was there for the very opposite reason.