Hi Cathy
Hi Cathy
September – October 2016
Artists: Hester Chillingworth and Cathy Naden
Hi Cathy is a series of emails from Small Spaces Commissioned Artist Hester Chillingworth (GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN) to artist Cathy Naden (Forced Entertainment) about the creation of Chillingworth’s new performance, about childishness in performance and about queerly opening out questions that act on making.
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TO: Cathy Naden
FROM: Hester Chillingworth
29/8/2016
Hi Cathy,
Thanks so much for agreeing to have the conversation about childishness in performance with me. I’ll tell you were my thoughts are so far with it.
I’ve been thinking about what childishness allows or ‘buys in’ on stage. Immediate things that have come to mind are repeated and glorious failure (without necessarily an accumulative problem around that), inappropriateness, volatile temper/emotions, curiosity, desire to play, permission to be messy and (maybe) rather clumsy aspiration to be serious/ a grown up. Thinking about the theatre work that Forced Entertainment make and some of the work I’ve made with GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN, I’m noting that a lot of the joy of seeing performers behave childishly comes from the audience’s simultaneous awareness that they are actually adults – that they ‘should’ be behaving more maturely – and therefore that the childishness comes from a place of mischief or ‘wrongheadedness’, as I’ve heard you guys call it in rehearsal. I suppose in a way this is not dissimilar to one of the ways in which drag works, as a performance trope – the joy coming from the performer always remaining visible and present in some way, alongside the drag persona.
A doubling.
So we in the audience enjoy the leap, the reach, the audacious stretch between the two (and, as much, the gaps, the failure to ‘complete’ the reach, or perhaps the intentional diversion of the reach into some new territory…e.g. maybe we wonder in the audience, if they’re not trying to be childish or (in drag) a different gender any more, what are they trying to do? And perhaps more importantly, why?). If the implicit question in the air is, why do these adults think this is the best way to get the ‘job’ of this show done, I’m wondering if it’s because being ‘silly’ and perhaps childish, is a less aggressive and (potentially) more humorous excuse for breaking rules and flouting convention, than (for example) occupying a position of hyper-aware and politically-activated stage anarchist? We could say that that level of knowingness necessitates a certain stance of taking oneself seriously, and therefore limits the space for laughing at oneself, and therefore allowing the audience to laugh at you, and so at themselves and so at the world. What do you think about that? Do you agree?
In fact, do you guys at FE think of it as childishness, in what you do? Or is that not in the vocabulary? I’ve noticed that you often get called on to have a petulant moment, an outburst, in the shows. Do you think of childishness for this?
In the piece I’m making for the Small Spaces Commission, SHORTY, I’m finding that a huge amount of the work I’m doing is in trying to smuggle the seriousness, the real show, in under the subterfuge of the childishness. In GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN work, we’ve usually had the double-act of Lucy and Jen at the centre and therefore can use them as counterpoints to each other, if we need an anchor while one of them is off being ‘stupid’. Of course there are many times when they’re both off doing that and then the game is the suggestion that, with no anchor, they’re never going to come back. But of course they do, because in the end it’s the ‘real show’ that we’re trying to deliver. In this solo work I’m finding it a slightly different manoeuvre. What are your thoughts and experiences of this act of smuggling the seriousness in, amongst or via childishness? And do you think this alters when there are more or fewer performers on stage?
Ok, probably enough thoughts and questions to start off with. Look forward to hearing, and thanks again for helping me think this through.
Hx
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REPLY TO: Hester Chillingworth
FROM: Cathy Naden
29/8/2016
Hi Hester,
Thanks for inviting me to talk to you and for your thoughts so far about childishness in performance.
In [Forced Entertainment (FE)] we use that word but have other names for it too. Naughtiness, mavericks, cheese heading (long story), playfulness, maybe sentimentality even. We like it because it invites people in. It opens up a fluid space between audience and stage. There’s an element of risk – it’s good people might be thinking can they really get away with that!! We can because it’s carefully choreographed stupidity, placing embarrassment and anarchy centre stage.
I like the parallels you describe between childishness and drag in performance- how both modes employ a stretching, as you call it, between the person and the way they present themselves. This gap between the performer and what they look like or what they do has always fascinated FE because it’s a way of placing the audience in an active relationship. They are spectators at something, being made to ask questions, consider, and, of course, laugh as they watch.
An early conversation in FE about children and acting was about how in the school play, the naughty ones or the ones who weren’t very good would end up in the chorus, or playing the scenery. We borrowed this for Showtime. Claire and Terry wore cardboard tree costumes. They were the scenery but they ended up taking over the show. It was very funny and sometimes painful to watch. It was also, if you like, a move to put unofficial and unlikely ‘characters’ in charge and there’s a kind of political act in that- giving a voice to childishness.
Childishness means interesting questions about competence. It’s also the maverick and the marginal: it’s an excuse for mischief making. In the theatre shows (and also in the improvised durationals) there’s often a pull between mucking about and taking things seriously. It’s true I do have a fair share of outbursts in shows. Sometimes it’s petulant, or acting like the one running the show (Bloody Mess comes to mind) but sometimes it’s more about a performance job- or a tactic. After enough silliness, we’ve ‘earned the right’ to be earnest, or hard, or heartfelt or poetic.
The show-within a show- I like how you call it smuggling the serious one/real one on stage under the guise of childishness, it captures the sense of illegality- has a natural dramaturgy in ensembles or double-acts perhaps. Something is happening because there is disagreement and oppositional attitudes on stage. I imagine it’s very different when there is only one. Do you still have to play the conflicts? Is childishness recognisable if it’s not pitched against grown up stuff? What does grown-up theatre look like? If you go off being ‘stupid’ are you also the anchor that pulls you back? Or will you just let yourself go off and never come back? That’s an interesting idea! Speak soon.
Cx
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FROM: Hester Chillingworth
REPLY TO: Hester Chillingworth
FROM: Cathy Naden