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Site Unspecific Theatre
Site-Unspecific Theatre
by Alistair Maxwell
At the Manipulate launch party, attendees are greeted by the The Dab Hands, three massive neon hands around three metres tall that blare music and joy. Cramped into the porch at the entrance into Summerhall, they are impossible to miss and kickstart the party with a little boogie and many gigantic high fives. Later, they can be found upstairs in The Dissection Room, leading an impromptu rave and disco session. It’s hard not to get into the party spirit when conducted by three hands jostling around the place. Their large neon bodies feel like beacons in the fashionably dark room and the performers were experts in whipping up the crowd into a good time.
Not only is this the 15th anniversary of Manipulate -Scotland’s premier international puppetry, visual theatre and animated film festival. It is also the first with in-person events after two years of Covid. The launch party is certainly not a long-speeches and sour-wine affair. It’s short, snappy, fun and perfectly illustrated by The Dab Hands who fitted into the excitement like, well, hands in gloves.
The next week, on a grim, grey day in The Meadows, it just isn’t the same. The launch party partygoers were of course ready to party; whereas the afternoon commuters are more keen to keep their head down and go about their journey. Many stop to take pictures, a few pass by with a little more spring in their step but seeing The Dab Hands giving it their all on the empty thoroughfare makes it appear more like a thought experiment on the importance of the “site” in “site-specific theatre” than playfully engaging festival entertainment. Of course, it always easier to preach to the choir. And engaging with the outside world is the only thing that stops the arts from existing in an out-of-touch bubble but that’s hardly on the forefront of anyone’s mind when they’re watching a child spot The Dab Hands and run away so hard that they fall over a tree stump.
Nature, or more specifically weather is every street performer’s muse and enemy. A play in a black box, no matter how different every night, is still a play in a black box. However the same bit of street theatre can either be the cherry on top of a perfect Summer’s day, or a torturous punishment on a cold Winter night. The risk is in the sunburn and the frostbite, but the reward is the ability to showcase certain improvisational skills. Like gathering an audience with no guarantee of undivided attention. The key difference between The Dab Hands and an installation for example, is the ability to improvise, to mount the challenge of the weather, to hook an audience despite the circumstances and do the best with no guarantees and ensure that something amazing does not become something easily ignored.
Another site-specific work that was briefly enhanced by the chaos of the open-air performance was Amy Conway and Melanie Jordan’s work in progress Blood Moon. In the Summerhall courtyard, bathed in red light, a series of wolf-girls bleed into the night -scratching, sniffing, howling. The pack of comical yet vicious performers weave in and around their prey, lashing out not because of a killer instinct but to cope with the transformative changes taking over their bodies. Cathartic group howling ensues. Menstruation and were-wolves are easy bedfellows; Bloody Girls by Firefly Arts did something similar in 2016. But what makes this performance so affecting is the tempestuous weather. When this were-wolf pack howl, the weather copies. When they cry, the clouds join in. The whole piece is conducted by the beating of the flag against the flag-pole, orchestrating the experience like a military march. However, nature does not like to be upstaged and soon the idea of being ripped apart by wolves doesn’t seem quite as bad as staying out in the rain. At one point, a sudden gust topples over a camera tripod that very nearly decapitates a child. Hopefully not the same one scarred by The Dab Hands.
Elsewhere those who walked along George IV bridge, opposite the National Library of Scotland may have looked up to see bodies floating up the front of the gilded building. From 5pm to 11pm, anyone passing may have glimpsed Sandman’s UN-retained, a project in which dancers are projected to float across the city-scape - weightless astronauts with the elegance of ballerinas. It’s a calm spectacle designed to enhance appreciation for that which surrounds us, to give the same-old same-old a second look. It’s a noble ambition and an effective plan, to those who are able to see it. Uncharacteristically for Scotland, it has been quite a light, bright month, which means that the projections become a little “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it”. Even knowing what to look for doesn’t help much. The silken costumes of the performers are lost in the light grey of the building. So detailed and embellished is the library that many of the movements are swallowed up by the architecture. As soon as it grows dark enough to properly make out the grace of the flying dancers, the lampposts come on, and the dancers are washed out again. It’s hoped that the darkness around 10pm would have offered a worthy canvas for any late-night passerbys. At least no children were injured during this one.
The quality of site-specific theatre is entirely dependent on context. On a horrid, windy, rainy night Blood Moon was a great success. Under the exact same circumstances, The Dab Hands would have been a painfully soggy ordeal and UN-retained, would have been unnoticeable. It’s not just that the audience need to be dry and in a good mood, it’s that the surroundings have to allow the best possible mindset for the audience’s appreciation. The key difference between site-specific and street theatre is the question: could this happen anywhere? Blood Moon could happen in any courtyard in any arts venue but the company snarled behind plant pots, crept behind statues, adapted themselves to their surroundings and generally made the place their own. Nature’s tempestuous soundtrack gave the piece a killer edge, but the foundations were so solid that even the weather couldn’t overpower it. Both Un-retained and The Dab Hands were on the other end of the spectrum. Great pieces that were smothered by their surroundings. Un-retained by the early evening light and the gilded architecture, and The Dab Hands by the grey afternoon despair.
All of the pieces shined in moments but what helped to elevate them above the weather was the enthusiasm of the audiences. All it took was one family to boogie with The Dab Hands for a crowd to emerge. All it took was one person to squint up at the National Library to turn Un-retained from a projection, into live theatre. All it took to bolster against Blood Moon’s pervasive winds was to join in the howling and share the warmth of the adoptive wolf-pack. There’s very little anyone can do about the weather other than adapt or embrace it. But by keeping an eye out, for giant hands, howling wolves, or dancers floating across monuments, all of us can turn a grim forgettable day into a live, vibrant theatrical experience.
