Brighton Festival 2015: Ten Days In & A Feast Of Arts Still In Store

Brighton Festival opened to huge acclaim & there’s much more still to come

We’re 10 days into Brighton Festival 2015 and there’s already been laughter, tears, five star reviews, tightrope walkers and several giant birds…! With more quality arts and entertainment heading our way, we asked three artists heading to Brighton Festival this year about their shows and why you need to get hold of tickets!

Choreographer/director Charlotte Vincent on Underworld and Look At Me Now, Mummy

What are the two pieces about?
You can read Look At Me Now, Mummy in several ways; it’s not as literal as it sounds and the context is that of domestic madness, really. It’s a beautiful solo performance with very few words and not a lot of dance, although it’s all movement based! It’s a woman lost in her own imagination, going through a series of rituals to keep herself sane… but actually in doing those rituals, she’s going a bit madder by the minute. Underworld is a vastly different piece of work. It’s a huge ensemble piece for eight performers. It’s really strong, powerful, moving, visually striking and is very loosely based on the Orpheus myth. People get drawn into the world and stay as they want to see what happens next.

On Wednesday 13 May, both shows will run back to back and at the same time for nearly five hours. Why did you choose to present the works like this?
All the performers are at the top of their game and they’ve got incredible stamina. For them, it’s a real challenge to do what is the equivalent of two two-and-a-half shows in one night. It’s a very physical work and fatigue starts to play a part… but fatigue is part of this world; in Hades there is no respite or rest. Underworld is a restless churning that the performers are caught up in and they can’t really leave… and that’s the parallel of Look At Me Now, Mummy: the performer can’t get out of her – albeit very different – world either.

You’re also inviting audiences to come and go between the shows as they please?
They can move between shows and be guided by work. It’s more of a visual, physical installation than a performance. It’s a very un-British way of watching dance theatre, and I’d invite people not to be worried about disturbing others by coming in and out. You don’t worry so much about that in a gallery situation – you look at a painting for as long as you like and then move on – so we’re trying to encourage people to view the work in a slightly different way.

Tues 12 & Wednesday 13 May, Brighton Dome Corn Exchange and Brighton Dome Corn Exchange Foyer, 5pm & 8.30pm (Tues, Underworld), 4pm & 7.30pm (Tues, Look At Me Now, Mummy), 6pm (Weds, both shows, back to back)

Filmmaker Sam Green on The Measure of All Things

You’ve described The Measure Of All Things as a ‘pretty weird’ movie – what’s it all about?
It’s a meditation on the Guinness Book of World Records. To me the book is very striking because in it are many records that say so much about Fate and how we live in a world we don’t understand. The basic building blocks of our lives are dealt with and evoked in the book, so my show is a meditation on that; a series of portraits of people, places and things, from the oldest person to the tallest person to the oldest living thing. In that sense, it evokes a kind of poem about fate, time and mystery of being alive.

How did you choose the subjects of the films?
That’s the fun part – I basically went through the book and pursued the things that resonated with me emotionally. Y’know, like the tallest man and the dolphin [Bao Xishan used his long arms to dislodge fatal plastic accidentally ingested by a dolphin at an aquarium] – I love that one. I had someone shoot him in Mongolia and got the footage of him with the dolphin, so it’s just a great story that hits all the right notes. It’s odd, tragic, and beautiful in a way. It was very fun to look into these.

From a personal point of view, who was the most interesting person you spoke to?
I think the woman with the longest name. She has this enormous name which just goes on and on. At first I thought it was just gibberish… like someone fell asleep on the keyboard… but if you look closely at it you start to see words. Her mother made this crazy long name, but within it there’s city names like ‘Paris’, qualities like ‘love’, there’s other people’s names from her family; it’s an odd and wonderful quilt of all these different pieces of ideas and aspirations… and it works!

Have you ever broken a record?
The great irony of all this is that I did end up in the Guinness Book of World Records this year… and I didn’t even have to hula-hoop for 78 hours! They got in touch with me because they found a photo online of me at the quietest place on earth – an anechoic chamber – and it’s a photo of me holding a microphone. They asked me if they could use it to illustrate the quietest place on earth. I said of course – I always wanted to be in the book, but could never figure out how. I’m on page 74, right next to the ‘Most Valuable Tongue’.

Sat 23 & Sun 24 May, The Old Market, 4.30pm (Sun) & 7.30pm (Sat & Sun)

Actor Sandy Grierson on The Beautiful Cosmos of Ivor Cutler

What’s the show all about?
The play is basically a musical created by mixing Ivor‘s life with his music, poems and songs. Whether people have heard of Ivor Cutler or not, he’s influenced so many different people.

Who was Ivor Cutler?
He’s most famous through John Peel who played him on a lot of his sessions… I think he was second only to The Fall in terms of number of sessions. When you start listening to his music or his singing, you hear all these influences that run through his work, from calypso to country and western. He had a Jewish Scottish background so you also get a bit of Klezmer coming through. It’s a really rich musical background that he had, and it’s all concentrated into just this curious old man with a harmonium.

How does Ivor’s work feature in the show?
It’s part gig, part play. We’ve got a fantastic 5-piece band led by Jim Fortune, who’s a founding member of the close harmony group The Magnets. He’s done a fantastic job swelling out some of Cutler’s sounds; Ivor famously hated amplified music but we’ve played with that, so some of the music is simply him with his harmonium, and others swell out into big set pieces, like The Beautiful Cosmos which is the title of the show!

Wed 13 – Sun 17 May, Theatre Royal Brighton, 2.30pm (Sat & Sun) and 7.30pm (Wed – Sat)
brightonfestival.org