BOiLEROOM: The Terrific Electric at the Barbican 10 Sept 2007

Touch Wood #1 at The Place, 11 Sept 2007

My interest in live art means I am always looking out for new and emerging work across various performance disciplines, so this week took me to the results of two very different schemes supporting new work: BOiLEROOM’s ‘The Terrific Electric’ at the Barbican, supported by the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust (OSBTT) Award, and ‘Touch Wood #1’, a complement to this summer’s Choreodrome dance development programme at The Place. The two experiences could not have been more different.

According to the Barbican programme notes, the OSBTT Award aims to support ‘emerging practitioners engaged in bold, innovative and challenging theatre’ by ‘facilitating the transition from fringe to studio spaces’. OSBTT does this through a generous grant and various levels of mentoring (this year’s scheme was mentored by Mark Ravenhill). It was such a shame therefore, that BOiLEROOM’s The Terrific Electric was a dull, poorly structured assemblage of visual theatre clichés.

The Terrific Electric is ostensibly about the impact of electricity, radio and the idea of new technology in general on the lives of three - more or less hysterical - women from another era. The show wears its visual theatre influences obviously: costumes hanging from the ceiling, quirky dancing and magic tricks, a facile voiceover, and an agonising fondness for video projection. The company describes itself as practicing ‘investigative theatre’ and claim to be interested in various questions about the world outside the theatre – though its references to science and history amount to little more than crude caricatures. But the real failure of The Terrific Electric is that it is not inquisitive enough about theatre itself. What is this collection of titbits and slapstick supposed to create? What effect are they trying to create? Why do this as a live performance as opposed to any other form? For a piece essentially about a singer losing her voice, this show has no heart.

It made me wonder where the OSBTT process went wrong: BOiLEROOM’s ideas sound interesting on paper, and the performers are clearly capable (even if they are too often reduced to over-egged pandering to the audience). I wonder if the clue might be in the phrase ‘transition from fringe to studio spaces’, and whether this particular transition made it too easy for BOiLEROOM to emphasise style and marketing with insufficient attention to substance and structure. It’s as if BOiLEROOM has tried to do everything they’ve seen ‘professional’ companies do but missed out on the invisible but crucial task of developing its basic ideas and goals – which suggests something lacking in the structure of the OSBTT scheme. The result reflects poorly on OSBTT, the Barbican and BOiLEROOM; who were doubtless overwhelmed by this opportunity and are now not likely to get many more.

It was such a refreshing change, then, to attend the first (#1) evening of The Place’s Touch Wood season, a new feature for 2007 in which artists, most of whom have participated in the Choreodrome programme, are invited to present in-development work to the public. In contrast to the over-produced and under-thought feeling of The Terrific Electric, Touch Wood’s selling point is its back-to-basics minimalism: the dance floor of the Robin Howard Theatre has been stripped away, revealing the bare wood underneath and there are no curtains or blacks on the sides. As associate director Eddie Nixon explains in his welcome, the idea is to recreate the feeling of the studio.

‘Touch Wood #1’ featured four new works (rounded off by a reprise of Shobana Jeyasingh’s ‘Prologue’ from her company’s 2004 production ‘Transtep’). All these four new works, in a marked contrast to The Terrific Electric, shared a studied attention to the basic elements that make up the performance. Watching Temitope Ajose-Cutting’s ‘BASE’ felt like watching someone learning how to put these pieces together: solo dance, group dynamics and unison, and working with live musicians, costume, and lights. It had an easy, confident theatrical language, and though it may not have had anything particularly powerful to say with this language, it was well structured, dynamic and exuberant. Similarly, Zoi Dimitriou’s work ‘Dromoi’ gave considered attention to each gesture so that the simple first action of unwinding a microphone cable to mark out a square around the stage took on an engrossing symbolism that set the mood for his sparse and meditative piece.

But the real standout was Colin Poole’s ‘Joyride’, which became truly electrifying – and terrifying – by adding the relationship with the audience to the elements with which it works. This provocative, brave and disquieting piece begins with a typical scene from an airport or holding cell: Poole removing some clothing and emptying his pockets of loose change, keys, and passport. But he doesn’t stop there, and he’s soon completely naked, staring us straight in the eyes and moving with the graceful fury of Rilke’s panther. ‘Okay. Let’s talk’ he says. ‘Get to know each other better. Relax. Get things off our chest.’ Never breaking eye contact, Poole reflects back all the uncomfortable thoughts we might be having about his nakedness, his dancer's body, his blackness on display: ‘I know what you’re thinking. I know what you’re dreaming. I know what you’re wishing.’ Held together by Poole’s incredibly skilled control over his voice, gaze, and body, this is powerful and mesmerising work which both depends upon and challenges its relationship with the audience – it is as much a live art intervention into the dance world as a piece of dance.

Written by Theron Schmidt

Touch Wood continues at The Place until 6 October:
http://www.theplace.org.uk/?lid=7885. Colin Poole’s 'Joyride' will be presented again on 20 September. Tickets cost £5-£15, book online or call the Box Office on 020 7121 1100.

BOiLEROOM’s The Terrific Electric is on at the Barbican until 15 September

Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust website:
http://www.osbttrust.com