Dutch Premiere: Bill Aitchison

After his success at the Edinburgh Showcase in August (see his interview on this blog), Bill Aitchison will be in Groningen on 9 and 10 October in the frame of I'M T O G E T H E R, a festival based on the idea of collective practices in theatre with projects, lectures, presentations and performances of/by 12 artists working with Ivana Müller.

The premiere of his performance 2012 will take place on Friday 9 October at the Grand Theatre Groningen and will be followed on Saturday 10 October by a talk on conspiracy theories in China.

For more information about the I M T O G E T H E R programme and box office visit www.grand-theatre.nl or call T +31 (0)50 314 05 50 (box office) / +31 (0)50 314 46 44 (office)

After the Showcase...

Artists, producers, international delegates, British Council managers, all left Edinburgh with the wish for further collaboration. In this blog, I have been able to only report on a very small part of the whole Showcase programme, due to a lack of time mostly. Other very good performances were shown, like Lemn Sissay's thought provoking Why I don't hate white people, Michael Pinchbeck's sincere Post Show Party Show, or Dennis Kelly's brilliant text Orphans directed by Roxana Silbert. I will still keep this blog updated when performances from the British Council Edinburgh Showcase will tour across Europe or beyond. If you wish to receive more information about the Edinburgh Showcase, you can visit the British Council's website in your country or our Arts pages. And if you have any questions about the British Council's work in the Benelux, or wish to send your feedback, don't hesitate to contact me or subscribe to the Netherlands eNews.
Thanks again for your interest in this blog and looking forward to updating you with more news in the future!

The 14th Tale by Inua Ellams

A man is waiting in a hospital, his clothes are stained with red. He is nervously asking the nurses what happened, how the person he is worried about has been. From this anxious scene, we move to the past, to this same man’s childhood and then to his teenage life. In The 14th Tale, Inua Ellams tells us his story in a brilliantly staged manner. He tells us more about his writing and The 14th Tale. Interview by Canan Marasligil. Photo by Ed Collier.

Could you tell us more about your journey as an artist, how did you arrived to writing poetry?

I schooled in Dublin for three years, one of my best friends there used to argue about everything, about the colour of the sky, about everything! Our friendship was based on argument, we would argue that the sky is blue or pink! We started studying English and Shakespeare together and had this teacher who had one leg shorter than the other so he had to go tip toes to balance it out. He gave us so much Shakespeare, you had to like it or hate it. Despite all of our arguments, my friend and I loved these classes a lot. My friend said I would become a writer from the beginning, which I never thought I would. He dared me to write a poem, which I did and showed to the teacher who told me it wasn’t bad, which is the equivalent of a Norse god giving you a hammer to do the world! Then came the summer holidays and my friend committed suicide. I remember when I went back to school, all my teachers and my classrooms had been changed, so I wouldn’t have to sit where I usually sat with him. I guess I began writing after that.

As a way to express the pain?
No, not because I needed to get the pain off my chest or anything, just because the person who I was most vocal, most verbal with wasn’t there anymore. That’s how it started. But even then I never cast it as poetry. I was just rambling in a piece of paper and trying to structure it in a way. When I came to London I discovered the poet Saul Williams and the movie Slam, in which he stars. In the movie, he rises up and stops two groups of prisoners from fighting by reading a poem between them. There saw how words could be powerful. I thought he sounded the way I wrote and that perhaps I was a poet?

Is this also when you have decided to write for a stage?
I didn’t want just to write poems and read them out loud in places where people won’t be listening, I wanted to create something for a theatrical space, where people are expected to sit down and keep quiet.

The 14th Tale is also very well structured.
It comes from poetry writing, which is very structured too. When you know the rules, you break it better, so I learned the structure of writing poetry and most of my work is structured. When writing The 14th Tale, I knew exactly what I wanted to happen, when and how. It just works well like that.

What does the title The 14th Tale mean?
My first collection of poetry was called the Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales, so I wanted to show that this work, The 14th Tale, was a progression of what I did previously. To show that this is different and this is where I am now. All that is going to happen after will be new.

Is your work always autobiographical?
No, my first book was very political and was about me rambling angry at things. So after that book I thought of writing for the theatre and my mentor asked me what I was most afraid about? And that was myself! I never thought I would have anything interesting to say but he kept pushing me, and here I am with The 14th Tale.

How has been the audience reacting to The 14th Tale?
So far it has been good and warm. I began with very few numbers and it has been built progressively. Even the other day I thought my energy was low, we had technical difficulties and I didn’t feel it was very well, and still the audience reacted very positively.

Do you believe your tale is universal?
Yes, it is about growing up and about the battles one faces as a child. That definitely resonates with everyone. Also the relationship between my father and I, which is also what the play is structured on. The idea of alienation, of standing out in a school, and relationships that put you in places you never thought you would have been or even considered. A lot of people can identify with these things.

Do you see yourself as a role model?
If people see me as a role model, that’s okay and it puts responsibility on my shoulders. But it’s a responsibility I won’t want on my shoulder because of what other role models do or how black men are perceived in the media, rap artists usually or people who don’t say anything of any importance. If my work can be accepted as something honest and true, which is what I am trying to do, and if that is what means to be a role model, then by all means yes.

http://www.phaze05.com/

2012 by Bill Aitchison

Grassmarket in the Old Town, one of the busy squares in Edinburgh, the wind is blowing away a pile of slides and creating chaos on Bill Aitchison’s temporary stage. During the Showcase, Bill Aitchison performs on the street, no matter how much rain, sun, wind, or noise, he is ready to present his apocalyptic one-man show 2012. He tells us how he arrived to the illuminating lecture on Mayan Astronomy, the war on terror, dog cloning, Saddam Hussein’s novels, why we should ban the 2012 Olympics and the end of the world. Interview by Canan Marasligil. Photo by Peter Empl.

Where does the idea of writing about conspiracy theories come from?

I’ve started working on the performance after having heard friends talking about all those documentaries made after 9/11 on the internet saying “it’s not what you think”. I’ve watched them and found some good and bad things in them, and I was also quite amused by one or two of these authors who are writing these types of material. I found that a lot of these conspiracy theories have something theatrical about them. They don’t take a very rational approach to making arguments, they construct things in a highly theatrical manner. I was reading quite a lot of these theories and trying to find connections between them, to find a structure to this way of thinking. And this led me to thinking it would be nice to put a number of them together, to make an anti-conspiracy conspiracy, one which goes around in circle and traces the outside of this way of thinking, and one that is a way of trying to get rid of it. This way of thinking seems quite inevitable. So it was very present in my mind.

What was the process like to achieve the current version of 2012?

I wrote a first version of the performance which I developed through different events, galleries and theatres. The theatre version premiered in 2008 in Manheim in Germany, which was different from the one I do here in Edinburgh. Essentially they are five strands of conspiracy thought, different topics. One of the topics was the war on terror, there was another topic about dogs, some of them were more serious, some of them less. But even when the theory is less serious, I try to hold the structure of a serious argument, and to present it in the same way.

What are the major differences between the theatre version and the one you are showing this week in Edinburgh?

I have a more complex editing system in the theatre version, in which I edit up between the theories very quickly, like surfing on TV, to catch two minutes of this person talking, two seconds of that. Also, I will include new parts to the next performances I will do in Germany and in the Netherlands, based on my experience in China. In April and May I had a one month residency in China, and I thought of the kind of conspiracy theory people in China were busy with. You take these theories to a completely different place and you see that people have a completely different set of thought and references.

Do the audiences respond very differently to conspiracy theories?

It struck me that this sort of conspiracy thinking is something that people are busy with in China as well for instance. It’s not an isolated phenomenon. And when you hear people talking about UFOs and Atlantis, it doesn’t matter if they’re from China, Mexico, Great Britain, Italy or South Africa. They can be from anywhere. It’s almost this international strand of thought. I think that people can identify with this very easily.

How flexible is your work depending on the venue you work in? 

On the formal level, the work does change depending on where I perform. Expectations change depending on the venue, in a gallery you have a gallery expectation, on the street it is more like Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, one of my favorite places in London where everyone who has a theory wants to share it with everybody else, and most of them are mad. Again that’s a very theatrical place. In a sit down theatre you can play with a different set of time and rhythm, people are more likely to consider it in a different way.

You seem to quite enjoy the unexpected and interact successfully with the audience.
I have to admit I enjoy chaos and I like to see people finding solutions on the spot, like it happened here when the wind blew all my slides away. And in a controlled environment like the theatre, you apply the creativity into a different frame. Although the piece is structured, I do try to create space for improvisation within these different corners. It doesn’t completely become a script even inside a theatre.

Bill Aitchison will tour in Germany and in the Netherlands this autumn.
For more information visit: www.billaitchison.co.uk

Ringside by Mem Morrison

In Ringside, performance artist Mem Morrison invites you to take part in a family wedding encompassing the horror and pleasure of all those he attended himself throughout his life, and which acts as a rehearsal for his own to come. Morrison tells us more about his work and how he draws from his own family history to reflect on more universal human experiences of loss or connection. Interview by Canan Marasligil. Photo by Andrew Whittuck.

You are presenting Ringside in a wonderful setting here, the Signet Library. How important is the location for this specific work and how does it help you express your vision of a wedding?

We slightly changed the piece for Edinburgh and adapted it to the Signet Library, but the idea is that the piece has been made for very central places of the community like civic spaces or town hall spaces. I attended a lot of weddings in these places as a child, and not just Turkish or Turkish Cypriot, but from all cultures. These spaces have been quite dead spaces now. The younger generations would not have had that experience, I’m just old enough to have experienced it. The idea of Ringside was to use a space where you would normally go to a wedding, a space that has some kind of history, and to bring a whole new life into it. The space brings the community together for celebration. For the Signet Library, I have decided to work more with the architecture and not use much light. I didn’t want to impose too much on the space.

You also like to play with the scale, for instance with the use of the headphones.
Yes, I very much like the idea of playing with scale. Some spaces we play in are the size of a football stadium! By giving headphones to the audience, I wanted to make it feel as if I was talking to every single person individually. It’s a very small intimate moment within a very grand space.

Indeed, one even feels isolated with these headphones on. Is it also the way people feel in weddings, being there without really wanting to be there?

I’ve been to a lot of weddings as a child, as a teenager and as an adult. Most of the time I didn’t relate to it or I didn’t want to be there, still enjoying it for what they were, but showing a façade, another me. That’s what I was trying to capture with the headphones, and the personal moment in this big celebration.

You also explore sexuality within this work.

Yes, especially as a gay man, being in that very Turkish Cypriot environment where everyone tries to connect you to a young woman, making it specific that it is going to be “my turn next”, as I keep repeating towards the end. I don’t have a problem with that if it is what you want, my sister met her husband at a wedding and they are happily married still. But for me personally, being the youngest of four I’m already within a different generation and I feel like I can challenge it.

And it doesn’t only relate to gay men but all men who are forced into the circle?
Indeed, it’s about sexuality but also about being in love. It was a challenge for me as I grew up and I knew that my sexuality was going to cause an enormous headache. I’ve seen so many Turkish and Turkish Cypriot men that have ended up getting married and are unhappy because they are in denial of their sexuality. It is something that is not hugely talked about within the Turkish speaking communities. However, I wanted to use something that is recognizable at a global level, the celebration, getting togetherness every culture will relate to. Also, my work comes from a personal place but it isn’t only about my life story. You can find your own way of connecting with it.

And your piece isn’t only about sexuality either.
No, it’s also about culture, religion, about being a man, being a woman. The women in the piece have total control of the piece. They play along with me but then they deconstruct it. They are the ones having contact with the audience as well, where I don’t play with the audience, which is different from my previous works. Here I don’t even hear anything because I have ear monitors, I’m cut off.

For Ringside, you work with local women from the places where you perform. How does it work? Do you make a selection, how do you prepare?
Wherever we go, we will work in collaboration either with a commissioning party or a partner venue, and we make an open call: women, any age, 18+. After we explain what would be expected from them. They might be performers, dancers, people who’ve never been on a stage before, a visual artist or a photographer interested in trying a new form of expression. So it is a real mix. The show is very precise and clean, and I like that the women have different energies. I work up to two weeks with them to come to a neutral place. I don’t want them to be acting, they will be given tasks to perform throughout the piece, like greeting the audience, preparing the tables, dancing with the men in the audience…

How does the audience react to the piece? Has your family seen it?
My parents came to see me, and they could see the real me and especially how an audience would respond to it. And they liked the piece a lot, one of the women got my father to dance and I had never seen my father slow dance before! Then the rest of my family came. It was a really special moment for me because they’ve all contributed to this work which challenges sexuality. The audience also contributes to the piece when they pin the money to the ribbon for instance.

Have you performed a lot in front of Turkish speaking communities?
Yes, in London we had full sold out shows in spaces where a lot of the Turkish weddings took place in the 60s and 70s. We got on average at least 10-15 Turkish speaking audience every night. A lot of them spoke to me after they’ve seen the work, and despite the element of nostalgia, it raised the debate about the pressure of marriage on men and women. I felt I had to take the responsibility to be a sort of role model for the younger generation, to empower them and tell them “you have a voice”.

And your work isn’t only about specific communities, it appeals to everyone, we all need a voice.
Yes, even if this piece takes a specific culture as a basis, what I want to say is that people don’t have to follow what everyone before them has done and that they have the power to be what they want to be. That’s what we really need to nurture. 



Until 28 August, Signet Library Edinburgh.

www.artsadmin.co.uk/memmorrison

Power Plant, A Sound and Light Experience

“You will feel like Alice in Wonderland” said my colleague Julia when sharing her enthusiasm about Power Plant with me this morning. My expectations were set, I wanted to get into another world.

The place is the Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh, the time is right after dusk. There’s a long line in front of me, everyone is waiting to be accepted through the gate, “Tickets for 9:20 could you please move forward”, they accept visitors per 10 minute slots, “for health and safety reasons” explains the young lady controlling the times on each ticket. “I’m going mental with this health and safety!” says her colleague who just sent one group of 50 people inside the Glasshouses. The logistics all seem to be running well, “We will now take the 9:40 tickets ladies and gentlemen”, and yes, it is me, I’m going through the gates for a few more seconds of waiting on the other side. Before they let us in, we’re informed that this will not be a guided tour and that once inside, we can do as we please, take the ways we want “as long as there is no sign, water or a barrier stopping you”. I’m not in yet and I already feel I’ve escaped the real world.


As I enter the glasshouse, I move into a space where insects and flowers have been replaced by electric neons, lights and sounds. Red light, green light, white light, blinking lights, dancing lights… all surround the plants and show me multiple ways I can take. Power Plant is the world of Mark Anderson, Anne Bean, Ulf Pedersen, Jony Easterby and Kirsten Reynolds, genius creators of the twenty two installations to be seen across the Botanical Gardens. In these worlds gramophones and disco balls are hidden in the trees, rootless strawberries are lying on soil, snails take on psychedelic forms, torn dresses hang up immense water lilies, fire plays music, feathers are dancing, flowers are kinetic… All are filling the various spaces across the gardens in perfect harmony with the plants surrounding them. Some of the flora was so powerful in itself, like the horse tail or the lonely trees at the end of the trail, the artists didn’t need more than a colorful light projection to emphasize their dramatic personae. You can get lost in Power Plant, you can feel overwhelmed by the surrounding energy and you definitely move into another dimension where you’re free to chose the level(s) you indulge in.

Until 30 August, Botanical Gardens. http://www.powerplant.org.uk/

Iris Brunette by Melanie Wilson

Subtle and dreamlike, Iris Brunette is a poetic performance by writer, performer and sound artist Melanie Wilson, presented with Fuel at the Edinburgh Showcase.

Mystery starts from the very beginning when the audience is invited to sit in a circled room with sixteen chairs and plunged into complete darkness for a few long seconds. Then slowly appear dots of lights across the room, followed by the silhouette of Iris Brunette: the story teller, the watcher, the watched, the real, the ghost, the central woman of this performance played by a graceful Melanie Wilson. Iris Brunette is a fragile and atmospheric journey into a post-apocalyptic cityscape, inspired by Chris Marker’s 1962 black-and-white film La Jetée. More than the story, the whole play is built around the atmosphere which is set by Wilson herself but partly depends on the audience. Within a subtle light play and soundscape, every single member of the audience is part of a story Iris Brunette is about to tell, invent or remember: one is a sea captain, one other embodies apprentices at the monastery, one is a cartographer, one other is a bartender, … and there is the man, which Wilson casts members of the audience to play in turns. When one thinks he or she has been cast to be an agnostic, they are suddenly faced with a choice to interact or not with Iris Brunette as the man she is constantly in search of. The light, the sound, the poetic text, Wilson’s soft voice and slow but precise movements altogether create a very intimate and powerful experience for the audience which can only but be engaged, whether in silence or under the spotlight. Melanie Wilson opens up many doors, it is up to us to go through them and look deeper into it.


Melanie Wilson, Writer, performer and sound designer

Ben Pacey, Lighting design

Peter Arnold, Design

Rachel Bowen, Production manager

Produced by Fuel


Until 30 August at 18:00 and 21:00, University of Edinburgh Medical School.

It all starts with a conversation

The British Council Edinburgh Showcase 2009 has kicked off today and has welcomed around 250 people across the world, all gathered tonight at the opening reception held at the National Museum of Scotland. Guest speaker Phelim McDermott (photo), artistic director of Improbable Theatre, has offered the audience an inspiring speech about the art of conversation. He tells us more about the importance of creating connections and how it influences his journey as an artist. Interview by Canan Marasligil. Photo by Jonathan Littlejohn.

During your speech to the Edinburgh Showcase delegates, you have spoken about the importance of having conversations and create connections, but that often people tend to “shoulder surf”, too busy to try to get somewhere. Could you explain why you feel conversation is so important?
Everything that has happened in my career has actually happened through a conversation. We often talk about conversation being this light thing, but we can make the decision to invest in a conversation and make it meaningful. This requires to look at ourselves and see whether we are listening or are involved, whether we are genuinely interested in this conversation that might be the beginning of a relationship. You never know in a linear way how it is going to pay off, but if it does, it is because it had some meaning in it, and more importantly because it has been engaged. What I learned through open space -the law of two feet, is that you don’t stay anywhere where you’re not contributing, you’re not learning, or you don’t want to be. This is quite a scary thing to do because there is so much social pressure about whether you stay or go, or watch a show you don’t really like. If you follow your two feet and trust yourself you will be taken into places that are valuable. It’s all on yourself. The Edinburgh Festival is an excellent opportunity to exercise the idea.

How does it work with the audience?
The audience creates an atmosphere through the quality of which they attend, watch, concentrate or don’t concentrate. The most interesting of our shows are those when either it is all amazing or nothing happens at all, because it means it is absolutely about the audience’s contribution. The scary thing as a performer is accepting and being honest that nothing is happening, but the audience also has to take the responsibility, by recognizing that the way they attend can change the atmosphere around the room. For instance in a piece of music there are moments of silence. The quality of these silences is determined by the audience. If the audience is not concentrated the quality of silence will be different. We’ve seen it with the Philip Glass piece we did for the English National Opera. In that silence there is so much happening or not. And those two things interacting with each other is the experience of a live event. It is not just us, the performers and them, the audience, it is a circular event.

Does the British Council Edinburgh Showcase allow such connections?
I’m interested in meeting people who are engaged, not about showing my work and have people clapping about what I do. I want to offer the opportunity of a way of working that empowers them to create work, to connect with each other and things that might happen out of that. Here again what matters is the quality of conversations. I don’t think the Edinburgh Showcase is only about coming here and booking shows, it’s more about the possibility of these connections, recognising the things we share and share needs we have to connect across culture.

Getting ready...

Every other year, the British Council organises the Edinburgh Showcase which takes place from 24 to 29 August this year. It is considered by the international theatre community to be a crucial element of their programming schedule. It is a unique opportunity to come together for an intensive and high-profile week viewing some of the most exciting theatre and live art productions available from the UK. Delegates from the Netherlands and Belgium will also attend, alongside hundreds of other professionals from across the globe. It is also a unique opportunity for British Council colleagues working in the arts, like myself, to meet and exchange ideas.

The Showcase kicks off in two days and I am almost ready (still on holidays in England, slowly traveling up towards Edinburgh). During the whole week I will see some 15 performances and attend some major events from which I wish to report back on this blog. This is an interactive blog so feel free to leave your comments, questions or any thoughts you might have, whether you're in Edinburgh or not, this blog is open for all who are interested in the performing arts. I hope you'll enjoy!