Festival frenzy in Battersea and Belgrade
If you’re down Lavender Hill way over the Bank Holiday weekend you could do worse than pop into the BAC and take a sampling of the wild and wacky Burst festival that is in full flow in every nook and cranny of the place.
You might hear fringe veteran David Gale telling you something you didn’t know in a starched blue suit, like some less frightening version of Gilbert or George, or you might let Adrian Howells wash your feet– balm for the sole, he calls it –or you could be led through a white muslin labyrinth by an invisible guide holding your hand.
Actually, wherever you are you’re almost certain to find yourself in or near a festival of some kind, whether you want to or not, which is why I’m taking the precaution next week of going to Serbia to discuss the festival phenomenon at a safe distance.
I’ve got a feeling, though, that the agenda at the symposium of theatre critics and scholars in Novi Sad, near Belgrade, will be less interested in hearing about touchy-feely post-hippie narcissim on the small scale than about international projects and demographic trends on the large.
I’m particularly keen to hear about latest developments in street theatre. On the whole, I’d rather hear about them than actually watch them, mainly because I’ve never seen a lot of street theatre that was much cop anyway.
The best street theatre ever was probably the Mystery Plays in York and Chester, but there were some fantastic troupes in Holland and Germany about thirty years ago, and I quite liked our Natural Theatre of Bath. What gives now, who knows?
The anonymous hand holding at BAC reminded me that there’s nothing new under the sun, anyway, in all this stuff. Decades ago I went to something called the Liquid Theatre under Charing Cross arches where the audience was encouraged, nay compelled, to follow each other around and hold hands, massage each other’s backs and generally get down and sensual.
It was all a bit embarrassing, really, though I did have the pleasure of finding myself consorting with the great jazz singer Annie Ross at the very moment when one of the “instructors” said that we should say what we felt about our nearest neighbour by communicating that sentiment through their shoulder blades. I think I told Annie I loved her, but the response was dead.
This was less upsetting than the BAC frenzy perpetrated by the wild American so-called bad girl of US performance, Ann Liv Young, who lactates and urinates on stage, daring us to leave, an option quickly taken up by quite a few punters.
After that, you begin to see the special attraction of a family-oriented farm festival in Dorset or Chipping Norton, and I love the sound of the Truck festival in the village of Steventon near Abingdon where children play under the trees, musicians sit on hay bales round the fire, and you can buy books and sip local ales.
Sounds like an ideal preparation for the feeding frenzy at Edinburgh starting in a few weeks’ time…time to reach for the green wellies and picnic baskets.