Can theatre really change the world? Plus: international company Ephemeral Ensemble and three shows to see.
Can theatre really change the world? Plus: international company Ephemeral Ensemble and three shows to see.
Could a theatre show have the same impact as Mr Bates Vs The Post Office? Plus: the theatremakers behind Rewind at NDT, and three shows to see.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a newsletter about theatre written by Fergus Morgan.
This is the second issue of 2024 and it features: a bit about theatre’s power to change the world inspired by the remarkable impact of ITV’s Mr Bates Vs The Post Office; an interview with Ramon Ayres of Ephemeral Ensemble, whose superb show Rewind is running at the New Diorama Theatre soon; and your regular three recommendations for shows to see next week.
In case you missed it, the first issue of Shouts And Murmurs was sent out on Tuesday to all subscribers, containing a round-up of the week’s best theatre writing, plus some other stuff:
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Can theatre really change the world?
Last weekend, I watched Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, the ITV drama about the Post Office/Horizon scandal that saw hundreds of subpostmasters’ lives ruined in one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It is a sensitively written and performed piece of TV about an important topic: real state-of-the-nation stuff. I was extremely moved by it.
Weirdly, though, I also felt slightly envious. Watching the series and witnessing its impact – the Post Office/Horizon scandal has dominated the news as a direct result of the drama and the ongoing quest for justice has consequently received significant support, particularly from politicians wanting to piggyback on the programme’s popularity – I found myself wondering whether the industry to which I devote my life could ever achieve a similar effect. Could a theatre show directly engender such immediate and widespread change as Mr Bates Vs The Post Office has?
My immediate instinct was: no, of course not. Television is a mass medium; theatre ain’t. Mr Bates Vs The Post Office reached millions of people simultaneously; only a handful of theatre shows have ever been witnessed by that many. Perhaps theatre could change the world once, when things were simpler and plays were the only entertainment on offer. No longer, though. Gone are the days when a theatre performance could instigate a riot, which could help foster a revolution, like one kind of did when Beaumarchais’ The Marriage Of Figaro was performed in Paris in 1784.
It is not always about the number of people a drama reaches, though, it is about who those people are, and what power they have. If the right person sees the right show at the right time, that can have an enormous impact. When Bernard Gimbel, owner of one of the biggest department store chains in America, saw Arthur Miller’s Death Of A Salesman, for example, he immediately ordered that none of his employees could be fired for being too old. Or so the story goes, anyway.
There are more examples of similar situations. Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s play The Exonerated was performed for Illinois governor George Ryan in 2002 and may have influenced his later decision to declare a moratorium on the death penalty in his state. Last year, the director Nicholas Kent told me that Michael Gove had claimed that seeing Kent’s verbatim production Grenfell: Value Engineering in 2021 was a major motivating factor in his subsequent pursuit of the cladding manufacturers that contributed to the tragedy. Situations like this are rare, but they do happen.
“Research has shown that the very act of sitting in a room with other people and watching a live performance can make you behave in a more empathetic way…”
Theatre’s impact is not always so direct, though. There are, of course, countless examples of shows being part of a wider artistic confrontation of a particular issue that has subsequently received sustained public attention: since 2000, the theatre industry has played its part in drawing attention to everything from the injustices of the Iraq war, to institutional racism, to the folly of Brexit, to the plight of refugees.
Loads of shows are intimately linked with more localised, less headline-grabbing social causes, too. I am a particular fan of LUNG Theatre’s work, for example: the Barnsley-based verbatim theatre company has done an awful lot of good through its superb shows Who Cares and Woodhill and their linked campaigns tackling the issues of young carers and prison suicides respectively. I could list dozens more like them.
And, lest we forget, the theatre industry also has – or should have – a role in developing artists that then go on to create impactful work elsewhere. Take Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, for example. Wrtier Gwyneth Hughes may have emerged through journalism and television, but stars Toby Jones, Monica Dolan, Julie Hesmondhalgh and Lia Williams are all stalwarts of the stage. Many great, conversation-changing films and television series have been built on a bedrock of theatrical talent.
One could go further: research has shown that the very act of sitting in a room with other people and watching a live performance can make you behave in a more empathetic way. Theatre, in other words, has the power to make you a better person. And, without getting too Bono about it, better people make the world a better place.
I’m currently re-reading Michael Billington’s magisterial history of British theatre, State Of The Nation (I picked it up again when looking for something to read at home over Christmas). One thing that struck me about his discussion of British theatre in the 1960s and 1970s was the certainty that the playwrights of the time had that their work could directly influence the world around them. I doubt many playwrights working today would share that conviction. Most theatremakers I interview tend to preface any confessed social or political ambition with something like: “Of course, I know that our silly little theatre show is not going to change the world...”
Perhaps theatremakers should not be so modest. Generally, apart from those special circumstances when a powerful person catches the right show at the right time, I think that, yes, a theatre show will not have the same impact that Mr Bates Vs The Post Office has had. Theatre’s strength to change the world lies elsewhere, though: in being a voice in wider conversations; in having a more local or particular impact; in developing the world-changing artists of the future; and in the act of bringing people together to bear witness to the experiences of others and exercise empathy. If Mr Bates Vs The Post Office proved anything, after all, it is that we are stronger together.
El Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense – the Argentinian forensic anthropology team – is a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated organisation dedicated to identifying the remains of victims of human rights abuses in Latin America.
Its remarkable work excavating their bodies, understanding their stories, and exposing the crimes of the oppressive regimes that killed them was the inspiration for one of the most inventive and moving shows I saw at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe: Ephemeral Ensemble’s Rewind, a multi-disciplinary, time-hopping show that used music, movement, puppetry, projection and more to explore the life of Alicia, a young woman in an unspecified Latin American state, energised by protest, murdered by the regime she resented, and ultimately exhumed by forensic anthropologists.
“We wanted to make a show about resistance,” says director Ramon Ayres. “This was in 2019 and 2020, when threats to democracy emerged across Latin America. Bolsanaro in Brazil. The uprising in Chile. People were being exposed to human rights abuses in Peru and Colombia, too. It was sad but interesting to recognise that history was repeating itself, that things were happening in Latin America that had already happened under the dictatorships of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.”
Ayres and the rest of the ensemble – Alex Paton, Andres Velasquez, Eygló Belafonte, Louise Wilcox, and Josephine Tremelling – threw themselves into research, discovered the EAAF, and devised a show based around their work excavating and analysing abandoned remains across Latin America.
“We found this document that explains how the EAAF work,” explains Ayres. “They locate the bones, they excavate them, they do a DNA test to identify them, they talk to the family, they examine fractures and injuries, and then they give the bones back to the family to make sure there is a proper burial and to close the cycle of pain. That beautiful process became the structure of our show.”
Directed by Eyres and performed by the rest of the ensemble, Rewind was developed throughout 2021, then premiered in Bogota, Colombia, in 2022, toured Latin America, then arrived in Edinburgh last summer. Now, Rewind is running at the New Diorama Theatre later this month, ahead of a national tour later in 2024.
“We want to raise awareness of this type of story, not only in South America but around the world,” says Ayres. “In Edinburgh, we had a very diverse, international audience. We had people from Turkey tell us it was their story, too. We had people from Bosnia. We had people from lots of different countries tell us they were super touched by the show. I think that is really beautiful.”
“We are all super interested in doing physical theatre that is social and political…”
Formed of graduates of London’s International School of Corporeal Mime, plus a few friends, Ephemeral Ensemble is a thoroughly international company: Ayres hails from Brazil, Velasquez from Colombia, Belafonte from Iceland, Wilcox from Scotland, and Paton and Tremelling from England. All of them work as freelance artists in other capacities but come together to collaborate often.
“Some of us met at the school, and some of us met while working together,” explains Ayres. “We are all super interested in doing physical theatre that is social and political. We are very collaborative, too. We really believe that the work is more versatile and stronger when everyone has an input. It is hard to make it work. I won’t lie. It is hard to get everyone in one room and hard to get funding.”
The company’s first show, 2016’s Carsick, was created as part of the New Diorama Theatre’s Emerging Company programme and transformed genuine testimonies from London taxi drivers into an innovative physical theatre performance. Its second, 2018’s Off Stage, explored loneliness, depression and suicide via a meta-theatrical clown show. Rewind is the company’s third production.
A fourth – a co-production with Colombia’s female-led Teatro La Mascara about the illegal exploitation of the Amazon’s natural resources – is being developed in February and premiered in Colombia later this year. Ayres hopes that a sister project might happen in the UK soon, too. “That is the dream,” Ayres concludes. “To try and create this bridge between the two continents.”
Rewind is at the New Diorama Theatre from January 30 until February 10. You can find more information and tickets here.
Three shows to see next week
The Last Show Before We Die - Yard Theatre, until January 27
Ell Potter and Mary Higgins are the theatre-making duo - once a couple, now no longer - behind hit shows Hotter and Fitter, which exuberantly examined female sexuality and modern masculinity. The Last Show Before We Die is, apparently, the last show they will ever make together, and it uses physical comedy, recorded interviews, and more to explore the act of saying goodbye. The Guardian’s Kate Wyver called it “vividly, viscerally alive” in her five-star review of the show’s Edinburgh Fringe premiere last summer. You can get tickets for its Yard Theatre transfer below.
Northanger Abbey - Orange Tree Theatre, until February 24
Zoe Cooper - the writer behind the brilliant plays Jess And Joe Forever, which starred a young Nicola Coughlan, and Out Of Water - returns to the Orange Tree with an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, directed by Tessa Walker and starring Rebecca Banatvala and AK Golding. It runs in Richmond until late February, then tours to Bolton, Scarborough and Keswick. You can get tickets via the button below.
Spark: The Highland New Play Festival - Eden Court, Inverness, until January 21
The inaugural edition of Spark runs in Inverness next week. This new festival, produced by Dogstar Theatre, Eden Court and Playwrights Studio Scotland, features rehearsed readings, panel discussions and a ceilidh or two. The aim is to platform writers and directors based in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and start fostering a community of theatremakers there. Next week’s issue of The Crush Bar will feature Inverness-based theatremaker Jack MacGregor discussing the festival, among other things. You can find more information about it via the button below.
That’s all for this issue
That is it for this week. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all, really - just reply to this newsletter or email me at fergusmorgan@hotmail.co.uk. Or you can find me on Twitter/X, where I am @FergusMorgan.
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Fergus