Danny Ridealgh Solo Performance

My initial idea for my solo performance came about after in depth research of one of the most controversial figures in Britain today, Pete Doherty.  Having seen a handful of solo performances at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2013 that focused on painting controversial figures in a positive light, I considered staging Doherty’s story against the tabloid media set out to demonise him.  As well as this I wanted to link this conflict with the media to Doherty’s musical quest to return to an idyllic England, an Arcadia, free from the tabloid media’s venom.  A great deal of Doherty’s music opposes the media and how they have depicted him because “were only told the one side of the story, we’ve lost all judgement on it” (Morley, 2006).

Knaive Theatre’s Bin Laden: The One Man Show, performed at C Nova during last summer’s Fringe, attempted to humanise Osama Bin Laden from the culture of fear against him that had been created post 9/11.  The performance explains in detail Bin Laden’s rationale behind the Al-Qaeda bombings, through the use of tea, biscuits and a flip-chart.  The show “explores many Bin Ladens: those we know, those we don’t, and those we prefer not to” (Wilde, 2013).  The show presented his story, uncovering details that the audience were not aware of and using audience members themselves to characterise the other prominent figures in Bin Laden’s life.  “The show represents a legitimate attempt to swing the pendulum the other way, get us thinking about the issues from ‘the other side’” (Glenn, 2013), this being my overall objective of the piece.

I wanted to explore Doherty in a similar forum, providing refreshments to the audience upon entry, immediately removing the forth wall between myself and the audience, then proceeding to use audience members to characterise figures associated with Doherty (Kate Moss, Carl Barat et al).  Offering an opportunity, like Knaive Theatre, for the audience to see the man behind the veil created by the tabloid media, a chance to understand the artist and not the ‘junkie’.  Babyshambles band mate Drew Drew McConnell brands tabloid media as being “the death of culture” (2006).  It is because of the drama in his life that Doherty wanted to take drugs, with his private life being exposed by the media, taking the drugs became the only way he could think of to have a moment of privacy.

I felt it was important to share my initial idea for my solo performance because it offers some light on what I’m aiming to create now.  After returning to my research on Doherty I found myself more enthusiastic about his musical vision of Arcadia.  Doherty sought to shed light on a time when the image of Britannia existed, when it was the idyllic place described by poets, writers and musicians.  This now is the concept of my solo performance: attempting to place the time when we as a nation perceived England to be at its peak, to be this paradise.

By Doherty’s example it is not the current England we live in, and we must look back to the past to hope to locate it.  Doherty is compared often to his main musical influence, Morrissey of The Smiths, and since other trends (i.e. fashion, Government etc) are suggesting that the 80s are returning, then perhaps this was when England was Arcadia?

Yet when we look at the 80’s, a decade of mass unemployment, rioting and war, all with Margaret Thatcher’s controversies leading the country this was one of the darkest periods in the 20^th century.  Thatcher herself campaigned with the mantra to ‘make Britain great again, like Churchill did’ meaning that the idea of Arcady gets passed back in time again to the 1940s and 1950s.  The premise of my piece is to highlight the fact that the buck keeps getting passed along our history until we realise that we have never lived in an idyllic England that artists have portrayed in their works.  Doherty himself identified this, saying “if it’s nostalgia we are feeling for England now, it’s nostalgia for a time that never existed” (Hannaford, 2007, p. 36).

Soon I will begin devising and experimenting how best to stage this concept.

 

 

Works Cited:

Glenn, William (2013) ‘Review: Bin Laden: The One Man Show’, FringeReview [Online] <Available at: http://www.fringereview.co.uk/fringeReview/5687 > [Accessed 18th March 2014].

Hannaford, Alex (2007) Pete Doherty: The Last of the Rock Romantics, St. Ives: Ebury Press.

Morley, Paul (2006) Who The F*** is Pete Doherty?, [Film] Rodger Pomphrey dir. United Kingdom: Image Entertainment.

Wilde, Joseph (2013) Bin Laden: The One Man Show, [Performance] C Nova, Edinburgh [15^th August 2013].

The name on the lips of our solo class over the last few weeks has been that of Matt Chewiwie.  He is a self-proclaimed artist who creates work through digital means and uses the internet as a medium to express his art.  While using him as a case study we debated what it means to be an artist and indeed what classifies as art, in the hopes that as individuals we kick start our opinions about what art should be.  This allowed us to consider our approach to producing a solo performance using the unique criteria we drew from the debate.

For me, I concluded that art needs to be something material, something that can be experienced in the flesh, not by looking at recordings or photographs of original work.  The example I offered in class is that to truly appreciate works such as Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa one has to be stood in the Louvre looking at the original and not simply searching for a Google image.  This is because it is not necessarily the artwork we admire but the artists themselves, and by standing a few feet from the very canvas Da Vinci painted on evokes a much stronger reaction to the art.  What we seek from art is to establish some form of relationship to the artist themselves – a window into their worlds.

In theatre, establishing the relationship between the artist and their audience is a technique most practitioners seek to provide.  ‘Breaking the forth wall’ is a vital component for expressing an artist’s intentions and can provoke greater reactions from the audience.  With this in mind, I now feel confident that as I move forward in my devising process, this is fundamental to presenting my artistic beliefs.