Reviews PerformanceReviews Published 10 April 2012

Forest Fringe: Day 1

Gate Theatre ⋄ 9th - 21st April 2012

Work by Alexander Kelly, Theron Schmidt and Yusra Warsama.

Diana Damian Martin

The first night of work at Forest Fringe’s residency at the Gate Theatre was as literary as it was theatrical, bringing together personal recollections, conceptual explorations, spoken word and storytelling; the results were a cross-section of identity politics and formal interplay, an evening of informal but engaged encounters.

In the first piece, Cape Wrath, Third Angel’s Alexander Kelly recollected his experience of following in the footsteps of his grandfather, whilst debunking the family myths that surround a trip to the eponymous cape in the Scottish highlands. There were projected photos of epic sunsets, rainy harbours and views from hostel windows. Kelly’s piece was about personal memory and family history, but it also took the shape of a powerful dialogue with a particular place, in this case, a territory shaped by the present and protected by the past. In this heartfelt piece, what was particularly striking was Kelly’s reading of his grandfather’s own account of this journey, chronicled in a diary. As Kelly sipped from a glass of the same whisky his grandfather drank, parallels began to emerge. On-stage the gesture of drinking became something different; an ode to a place or person, and perhaps a story yet to be told. There was so much material there for Kelly to question, to explore; as a piece it’s very much in the early stages of development and I look forward to seeing the shape his show will take.

The following piece, The State of Images, by the academic and performer Theron Schmidt, attempted to bring to life the moment in which an image becomes a representation. In the same way that Kelly’s piece referenced a journey and a process, Schmidt’s lecture-performance is a conceptualization of one. Accompanied by a boom-box, Schmidt describes what seems to be a journey through a series of landscapes, more psychological than physical, each of which takes shape in our imagination.  Schmidt played with the visual architecture of an image, exploring how our minds shape things and create a sense of liveness.  The more his words became public, the harder it was to grasp the entirety of the landscape: the interior of a room, or a place not yer formed. Something makes these empty environments come alive; perhaps it’s us, perhaps it’s their own contexts and histories.

The use of music, though intended to be atmospheric, often got in the way of the language, and Schmidt’s slightly reluctant performance style blunted the lyricism and complexity of his writing. Schmidt’s systematic drinking of water and his repeated pressing of buttons on the boom-box created odd breaks in the shape of the piece and created an unacknowledged ritual imperative in the architecture of the moment. That said, this was an engaging piece, packed with potential, and Schmidt an intriguing live presence.

The third performer of the night was the  writer and performance poet Yusra Warsama, whose eloquent and hilarious poems explored identity politics, and in particular the issue of  female genital mutilation, a subject which – as a poet of Somalian heritage – she is somewhat weary of tackling.  Warsama’s work touched on racism and her own heritage, and her pitch-perfect, energetic delivery changed the whole tone of the evening. She has a great grasp of the formal possibilities of poetry, but also a warm and playful style.

In the spirit of experimentation, Warsama and the evening’s curator, Chris Thorpe, next engaged in an amusing exchange; sitting at two desks, they responded to a set of questions they had answered on behalf of each other, reading out the results.  Clearly dependent on the particularity of the questions being answered, it was an intriguing exercise in which characters began to take shape, perhaps real, perhaps fictional: part of the tension came from the not knowing.

The evening concluded with Thorpe’s reading of a story he first wrote for the Forest Fringe in 2009. The story was a funny, engaging and subtle exploration of the reasons we sometimes construct lies. The simplicity of the set-up – performed with only a chair and a microphone – allowed the audience to really be present in the story.  Thorpe’s skill as a performer lies in the interplay between the embodiment and representation of a character. He can subtly juggle narrative, shifting the context or constructing a secondary thread with a distinctly different tone.

This first evening of the Forest Fringe residency took the shape of a cross-section of work, an open conversation guided by the willingness to share and think collectively. It was a strikingly literary evening, and at times, the reliance on words and the simplicity of the staging meant a lot was required of the audience. The end-on staging was inherently dramaturgical, imposing a formal quality on the work that was not necessarily natural.  However the distinct nature of each piece meant the tone of the evening was never uniform; this  unevenness allowed for different forms of access. Despite this, there was a sense of cohesiveness, in the use of story, the reliance on words.  There’s a sense of displacement at work but there are also rituals, recurrences in the interplay between gesture and speech, the playing with words and the surprising shifts in tone and perspective that occur in the midst of a story.

The Forest Fringe season runs at the Gate Theatre until the 21st April. 

To read Exeunt’s interview with Co-Artistic Director Andy Field and season curators Chris Thorpe and Dan Canham, click here

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Diana Damian Martin

Diana Damian Martin is a London-based performance critic, curator and theorist. She writes about theatre and performance for a range of publications including Divadlo CZ, Scenes and Teatro e Critica. She was Managing Editor of Royal Holloway's first practice based research publication and Guest Editor for postgraduate journal Platform between 2012-2015. She is co-founder of Writingshop, a long term collaborative project with three European critics examining the processes and politics of contemporary critical practice, and a member of practice-based research collective Generative Constraints. She is completing her doctoral study 'Criticism as a Political Event: theorising a practice of contemporary performance criticism' at Royal Holloway, University of London and is a Lecturer in Performance Arts at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

Forest Fringe: Day 1 Show Info


Produced by Forest Fringe

Cast includes Chris Thorpe with Alex Kelly, Theron Schmidt and Yusra Warsama.

Link http://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/

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