Having been a drama student in Liverpool during the 80s, and a male to boot on a regular basis, I found myself – in the words of Howard the Duck – trapped in a world I never made. It would be hard to call it a time of innocence. The Toxteth riots and the miners’ strike were symbols of a northern fury not merely misunderstood, but actually inflamed by the government in London. Poverty was rife, as was theft; it may seem counter-intuitive but somehow a lack of possessions made you more vulnerable to burglary, not less. Along once-thriving roads like Smithdown, the only growth industry was in boarding up shop windows. “Security by EXPO” was more prevalent than “La’s” graffiti.
Meanwhile, the life of a student – particularly one in the liberal arts – wasn’t all it was cracked up to be either. The advent of AIDS along with a post-feminist insistence that all men were potential rapists where even the most casual appreciation of a woman’s attractiveness marked you out a sexist pig – a misogynistic neanderthal who deserved to be deprived of his knackers courtesy of the nearest scythe. The resultant combination meant that twenty years after the sexual revolution on campus, your average first year saw about as much action as a Benedictine monk. At least the monk had the brandy to sustain him.
However, all this paled into comparison beside the drama of the time. The dawn of Channel 4 had led to a swathe of earnest, heartfelt and tedious state of the nation plays and programmes. The aggression of the left over low pay and slum-like housing conditions was giving way to liberal half-formed theories about Sandinistas and the importance of drinking Nicaraguan coffee. There wasn’t much fun being had, and any that was available had to be right on – as the phrase went - or not at all.
Of course, this is a generalisation and a sweeping one at that. There was Berkoff with his visceral visions of urban hell, studded with the poetry of the gutter; there was Godber’s Hull Truck Company, looking to find drama and humour in such northern delights as Rugby League and the local nightclub; there was Willy Russell, single-handedly packing out the Everyman with his tale of mid-life redemption, “Shirley Valentine”, performed by the author himself after his original Shirley – Noreen Kershaw – fell too ill to perform. But my abiding memories of the time are of a huge amount of preaching to the converted in trades union halls and Labour clubs, an awful lot of Brecht, and a lot of awful Brecht.*
Those notable exceptions above notwithstanding, theatre in the 80s could be a drab and soul-crushing affair, more akin to a lecture than an entertainment. Yet despite this, I couldn’t quite embrace the hedonistic surrealism of the site-specific or street theatre events that followed and became almost an essential part of the music festival scene of the late 90s onwards. While I admired the efforts to take performance to non-theatrical venues, the drama somehow got lost on the way. Here was ritual a’plenty, but without substance. There had to be a ground somewhere between these two extremes that didn’t smack of compromise.
Then I recalled my participation in a debate on The Guardian’s website over the nature of theatre and what it should be doing in times of austerity and politi...
I know - my eyes are glazing over, too. Tell you what, why don’t I just attach it? We’ll call it Exhibit A and for those of you who don’t want to guess, I’m entered under the nom d’internet of “yeruncle” (calling myself ‘Bob’ was both a blind alley and a bad pun that seemed like a good idea at the time). Grab yourself a cuppa and marvel at how much shit can be expelled by arty liberals in one morning. Particularly yeruncle.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2010/jul/16/cuts-theatre-economics
Recovered?
Leaving aside that I was wrong in a number of ways about “Black Watch” - more of that later – there were some aspects of that digital conversation that have gone on to shape this current, early, incarnation of Chronicle Theatre.
Firstly, that theatre is way too expensive.
Secondly, I do a lot of talking out of my arse.
Thirdly, there was a challenge out there to marry journalistic endeavour to theatrical voices and not come up with something dull but worthy.
Given that I was a theatrical with an NCTJ qualification in magazine journalism (don’t go looking for any articles – I may be trained but I’m lazy), it seemed as though I was particularly, if not uniquely, qualified to meet this challenge. But how?
First stop, verbatim theatre and “Black Watch”.
*Strangely, there wasn’t a vile amount of Weill.
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