Features Performance Published 11 December 2013

Estates, Opera and Cultural Omnivorism

Rachel Porter on Scottee’s latest project, Camp (on the Estate).

Rachel Porter

Last weekend my parents took me to the opera. Well, more specifically, my mum and I were dragged to the opera by my dad, who had uncharacteristically taken it upon himself to arrange a family activity. Truth be told, I was dreading it. The last theatre visit my dad had arranged was to an am-dram production of Ben Johnson’s The Alchemist that was so gut-wrenchingly awful we had to leave at the interval, something I never do.

So I was fearing the worst as I walked into The Royal College of Music to see a student production of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges. And guess what. I loved it. To give you an idea, imagine if Robert Wilson had been making experimental opera in 1920s France and he got in Michael Clarke to do the design, and then in the production meeting they both took a load of acid and wrote the show whilst completely off their tits. It was great. However, I’m not here as a reviewer. Rather, I am interested in looking at the way we approach different cultural spaces, the preconceptions that we have of them and how this effects the way we access art and performance.

When I walked into The Royal College of Music I brought with me certain assumptions both about the work as well as the audience that I would be sitting amongst. I assumed I would not enjoy the production because I was young, middle class, and perhaps slightly embittered that opera gets so much funding (public and private) whilst contemporary theatre struggles to stay afloat.

Ultimately I was being a cultural snob. It is important to remember that snobbery can go in both directions; the lower spheres (whether in the arts, social classes etc) are just as capable of condescension as the higher ones. I would actually argue that snobbery is less about looking down on others and more about blindly assuming you are above it all. Snobbery is the failure to be willing to understand that which is different.

Though of course, preconceptions are inevitable. If I were the one dragging my parents to see experimental live art they would undoubtedly bring their pre-formulated ideas about what they might expect to see and whether or not they’ll like it. The problem comes when preconceptions become prejudices, when we base our opinions of venues, artists and artworks on generalised, and therefore reductive, information. And the worst outcome of this is that audiences stay in their within their cultural safety nets, in other words we only go to see things we are already familiar with, or know that we’ll probably like. There is something exciting, therefore, when performances attempt to challenge these cultural prejudices and pointing directly at the distinctions we make between high and low art forms.

Camp (On The Estate) is the latest instalment of Scottee’s infamous variety show that has previously been staged at the Roundhouse and Bestival, already quite a dichotomy. This Christmas however Scottee is bringing the show closer to home by staging it in the local community hall on his council estate. The Dick Collins Hall in Regent’s Park Estate is a members club for residents that usually hosts ladies night and bingo tournaments.  It’s also under threat of demolition should the plans for High Speed 2 train go ahead, which will result in many residential homes on the estate being flattened. But before this happens, the stage is going to filled with variety acts from experimental artists and cabaret performers.

What I find fascinating about Camp, wherever it is performed, is the diverse selection of artists that Scottee includes in the show. This years line up ranges from performance artists Bryony Kimmings and Dickie Beau, to hula hoping from Donald Choi and tap dancing from Josephine Shaker, as well as stars from the queer cabaret world Jonny Woo and Bourgeois & Maurice. The line-up is eclectic and to some extent illogical, and through this the show escapes any simple classification or definition in terms of its genre. This is not dissimilar to Scottee himself who describes himself as ‘too weird for the cabaret world and not academic enough for the art world’.

Camp is a kind of performative embodiment of this concept. There is a clear sense of politics running through it, namely issues of class and taste, the question of queer identity, and, in Camp (On The Estate), a strong awareness of social issues and localism. But at the same time the show revels in vaudevillian silliness and entertainment; the aesthetic is trashy, brash with copious amounts glitter slash. This collision of concepts, this amalgamation of high and low cultural forms, forces us to (re)consider our preconceptions and the ways we attribute value to art.

Staging the show in the community hall of the estate takes this one step further by removing the work from the comfort zone of the theatre and asking audience members to enter a space that is decidedly unfamiliar. In his recent Reith lecture Grayson Perry shrewdly pointed out that what usually makes us uncomfortable in unknown cultural territories is the fear of not understanding the language of that space, of saying the wrong thing. He also recognised that the lack of diverse audiences in commercial galleries is often due to the intimidating contemporary art lingo, which is off-putting to those who are not versed in that type of complex discourse. My hesitation of entering The Royal College of Music was probably partly due to a feeling that I couldn’t ‘speak’ opera.

Camp complicates traditional distinctions of high and low cultural spaces by allowing theatre, and in turn audiences, to occupy varying locations in different contexts. This makes the show not site-specific, but rather site-unspecific; Camp is intriguing because of its ability to inhabit venues across the cultural spectrum. This is something that sociologist Herbert J. Gans refers to as ‘culturally omnivorous’, having the ability to move between high and low art forms. The assorted nature of Camp means different audiences will respond to different elements of the work, but if there is one thing that everyone can take from it, then perhaps it is how to be better cultural omnivores. It reminds audiences that in terms of cultural languages there is no such thing as fluency; there is not a ‘right’ way of talking about performance or accessing work. And finally it is only through entering spaces we may feel uncomfortable in, and taking the risk of seeing things we may not understand, do we find out where our own cultural prejudices lie.

Camp (On The Estate), created by Scottee Inc. and produced by the Roundhouse, runs from 11th – 14th December 2013 at Dick Collins Hall, London.

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Rachel Porter is a contributor to Exeunt Magazine

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