The Arches Live festival is always a treat. The venue usually bursts with creativity around every corner, and if what you are watching doesn’t strike your fancy, you just go on to something else a few minutes later and hope for better. It’s a place where established work is performed alongside work in progress, and it’s almost a stipulation that not only will the experience be mixed but that the best and worst won’t be what you thought they’d be.
As the full pass costs £28, it is one of the best cultural deals in Scotland. It allows you to enjoy the great and not feel too cheated by the disappointments.
And there were certainly some disappointments. Fall of a Window Cleaner seemed like such a good idea: taking the concept of a live orchestra playing accompaniment to a film. It wasn’t bad and the music was well-played, though over a week later I’m hard-pressed to remember much of it. It just didn’t click, and its brief 10-minute running time couldn’t end soon enough for me. Songs for a Stranger also disappointed me. The concept in the publicity sounded so clever, and I liked the blurb on the programme, but I’m afraid that the end result was an assault on my ears that made me appreciate the silence I found in the corridor afterwards all the more.
But not all was bad. Thom Scullion’s Play(Station) was a fun hit of nostalgia. An installation centred on gaming, people were allowed to play a large selection of video games and admire the aesthetic of both the consoles and the game cartridges. I myself come from the generation right before the systems on display, but it was still a nice work that gave a pleasant reprieve to the madness of the festival. Solar Bear’s Smokies teemed with creativity and playfulness. It was a clever piece of physical theatre that had the audience in constant laughter, though it did tend to go for the easy laugh a bit too much. Good, but upon reflection it could have been sharper. I felt the same about I Don’t Want To Talk About It, a short piece where Rachel Jury takes an interesting stand on the lack of substantial roles for women in theatre. For a piece where the artist is mostly gagged, it has a lot to say, most of which I agree with. It worked more than it didn’t. Then there’s Parallel, a piece that actually began really well. Two performance artists balance on a plank while a computerised voice defines performance art. I engaged with most of it until the very end, which just became a shouting and screaming match into microphones that seemed tacked on for the sole reason that no one knew how to end it. Endings are hard, but that choice plain sucked.
There were, however, some real gems. Kieran Hurley tried out a new play called Beats. Though the play is in early development, what he showed worked remarkably well, and if he keeps pushing in the right direction, Hurley is going to have something really special on his hands. Also really special was Sita Pieraccini’s Bird. A short physical piece about a feral child, Pieraccini’s physicalisation was both heart-breaking and uplifting. It was mostly very good with moments of perfection. Also on the very good list was Go Now, a beautifully performed short about a woman who has just died. As she prepares to ‘go’, she communicates with her spirit for the first time. A moving script combined with lovely performances equals a true highlight.
If I had to choose favourites, they would be the last two I experienced: Terra Incognita: We Dance to Shake It Free and Phoenix, both of which were excellent in their unique way.
In Terra Incognita, Laura Bradshaw and Murray Wason took a proactive look at movement, inviting the audience to use their bodies to dance, move and feel. What could have been self-indulgent, even perhaps off-putting to some, was presented in such an honest, heart-felt way that it was all but impossible to not want to engage. Bradshaw and Wason both worked hard to make the audience comfortable in exploring movement while creating some rather touching moments themselves. Perhaps they were let down a bit by the loud blasts of music next door and maybe the ending was a bit abrupt, but I felt that a full journey was nonetheless taken and felt all the better for it.
Phoenix just might be one of the craziest ideas I’ve seen at an Arches Live: four actors sat at a table and spent three hours repeating, in as many variations one could think of, the famous line from the film Network: I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore. I only caught the final 25 minutes, but what at first seemed odd quickly changed in emotion and as the end neared Ravel’s Bolero began to play, and as it built to its crescendo and as the four actors grew louder, members of the audience began to join in. Louder it got and soon almost everyone in the room began shouting with the actors, using microphones or just shouting out, sometimes in anger and sometimes with good cheer. It created both a sense of community and a feeling of euphoria, and what began as an oddity that looked like it would grow old quickly became one of the most genuinely interesting and gratifying experiences I’ve had in recent years. It’s the type of oddball brilliance I have come to expect to find each year.
Which would be my one slight complaint concerning this year’s Live. In previous years, the entire building felt like it burst with creativity, with events happening in unexpected places and times. This year seemed a bit…too controlled. Events were managed well and audiences were shuffled in and out much hassle, but there weren’t many moments of spontaneity. Rather than coming to a building filled with beautifully choreographed chaos, everything seemed too well in order. Perhaps a bit of a ridiculous complaint on my part on what was otherwise a very good year.
Arches Live 2011 has ended its run.
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