The word ‘facetious’ comes up often during my conversation with Scottee, who seems to find the adjective perfectly suited to describe both himself and his work. It may not apply to his piece The Worst of Scottee, but it certainly does to its origins: “I think I was in Edinburgh in 2012, watching a show by a friend of mine called The Best Of and they were showing the best of their attributes and the best of their work. I knew I wanted to make a solo show and I felt this weird pressure were people were saying ‘oh you’ve got to make a solo show because we want to know what you’re all about’. And I just thought, actually if I’m going to make a solo show, it’s going to be about the worst of me. I started to investigate what the worst of me was and I realised I have got a lot of people in my past who don’t talk to me and so that became the premise of making the show.”
What happened next is a cyber-stalking search party for people who ceased all contact with Scottee. Of the 10 who were found only four agreed to take part in the project and just three actually turned up on the day, not really knowing what they were getting themselves into. They were then interviewed by a psychotherapist and gradually led to all the necessary facts, before being asked if they would agree to sign a release form. Scottee is very careful to emphasise just how much effort was put into ensuring his first solo was ethically sound: the psychotherapist was brought in to provide everyone taking part with a safe environment, and he himself was not allowed to meddle with the interviews. Instead he saw the edited videos – the base of what was to become The Worst of Scottee – in a rehearsal room with his entire team, including the director Chris Goode, an experience that brought on an embarrassing confrontation with the effects of his past escapades.
This somber content is a rather sharp turn for a performer known for the variety extravaganza that is Camp and putting on Hamburger Queen, ‘a talent show for fat people’. A deliberate toying with the expectation of the audiences, The Worst of Scottee is also a confrontation with all the connotations glued to his name: “I wanted to say ‘here’s my opening statement, here’s my first solo show, this is how shit I’ve been as a human being to other human beings, now you can decide whether you still come to my shows’. A lot of people had an opinion of me, of what I was and what I represented, and I guess I wanted to play that out in a sense and say no – I’m actually a bigger cock than you think I am.” The somewhat dramatic premise of the show also works as a guilty-pleasure magnet: “You actually come to watch a car crash, thinking ‘look how how hideous the story is, this is going to be awkward to watch’. And actually you realise that it’s real and hopefully what people realise is this isn’t extraordinary, we’ve all done stuff like this, we can all relate to it. I think some people come thinking they are going to hear great dirt and then actually, what they get is realness.”
This ‘realness’ is of course a necessary ingredient The Worst of Scottee needs if it’s to avoid looking like artistic exploitation, and comes hand in hand with doing one’s dirty laundry in public. It’s a tricky balance to get right, but at least in Edinburgh it proved possible, earning Scottee a Total Theatre award: “I went up and I said ‘this is a really strange thing, that I’m getting an award for pretending that my first girlfriend committed suicide’. That’s a really odd thing. I don’t think people are supposed to say this about awards, but I thought I earned it, because I’ve been so honest that actually I couldn’t have been any more honest. And actually performance is about telling the truth through lies.”
Six months after the Fringe, The Worst of Scottee is on a mini-tour of the UK – just as soon as it comes back from Melbourne. For all its accolades and five star reviews, the show is still finding touring the UK difficult: the problems echo much of the recent #illshowyoumine debate, and Scottee sums them up in proclaiming it was ‘easier to get the show to Melbourne than to Manchester’. Venues attempting to reduce the fees and not investing into marketing and artists undervaluing their work all feature: “Our venues are heavily subsidised to make it accessible for artists to tour their work to the regions, because we don’t want an England which is focused on making London its epicenter. The Arts Council do everything they can and actually I speak very highly of them in terms of how they try to get us to tour. But then our venues want us to come for free, pay our own transport, pay for the promotion […] Venues use the funding that they get from the government for core costs and we need to expose that – the money that they get to support artists to come to them is not going on what they say it is. Work isn’t getting to the regions. This show is priced at what it is priced at and people have tried to negotiate with my producer and they get an ‘I’m afraid not, this is how much the show costs’. I’m aware we are able to this now because the reviews for the show were strong and because the reputation of the show is very strong and they understand we will put a lot of effort into making it work. But I think it is about artists saying ‘I’m afraid not’.”
While these problems are embedded into the performance art world, Scottee has a reputation for insisting he is part of a somewhat different genre, namely Light Art, “half light entertainment, half live art, which is about accessibility and not about pretence and is about being for everyone, but also being as good and as interesting and political and progressive as possible”. He made his name in a less traditional way, having been “quite mouthy” when it came to his opinions on the live art scene.
Instead of performing in traditional live art venues, Scottee has put considerable effort into taking the art(ists) to different audiences, especially those who come from a working class background: “I’m so bored by live art and theatre audiences. Because you look out and you just see other live artists and practitioners – you’re just preaching to the converted. That’s why I did Camp on the Estate and I put live artists, cabaret artists and variety artists in the middle of a council estate in north London and said – right, now let’s do it, now let’s see if it’s any good. I think there’s this white guilt as well that live artists have. If you look out at the audience it’s very rare that you see non-white people. There’s this argument ‘oh well maybe non-white people who are lower class don’t like theatre’ – well they pay taxes and you are heavily subsidised by the public pocket so find a way to get them into the theatre. People like Vicky Featherstone have shown that you can actually move the Royal Court, put it in Peckham and those audiences will come. So it’s an ignorant point of view to say ‘maybe the arts can’t engage lower class people’.”
Social mobility was partly why Scottee Inc, a community interest company and charity, was set up. Oriented towards community minded projects like Camp on the Estate, Scottee Inc. will also aim to set up apprenticeships for those taking a less orthodox way into arts. Next for both Scottee and Scottee Inc is another round of the Hamburger Queen, followed by a contemporary dance show about morbid obesity and fat shame at the Southbank, and a project which will see Mark Ravenhill, Lois Weaver and Chris Goode work with three pub drag performers. In the meantime, Scottee remains faithful to his ultimate lacmus test: “Whenever I make work I always think ‘what will my mum think of this’. Will she like this or will she think ‘I don’t understand it’. And if she thinks she doesn’t understand it then I think it’s not working.”
The Worst of Scottee is at the Roundhouse from 4th-15th February 2014.