British Fringe Theatre as Folk Laboratory

A Talk Delivered by David Parry to the Scientific-Practical Theatre Conference in Azerbaijan on 9-10 November 2010

· Thanking the organisers

· Greeting other delegates

· Describing “Gruntlers” arts group

Introduction:

British Theatre may be divided into two broad categories: large scale commercial productions that are designed to have widespread popular appeal, and small scale “art” centred productions aimed at specifically targeted audiences. In this talk, I intend to concentrate on the place and purpose of so-called “Fringe Drama” as an essential part of the world theatre process. It is, after all, highly lucrative in it’s own right, socially challenging and unrepentantly innovative as a dramaturgical form. With these thoughts in mind, I will outline three key areas of recent British fringe experience: folk theatre as community based cultural memory; the origins of modern fringe in spiritual radicalism; contemporary intellectual experimentalism and the problems of diversity.

Thesis:

Arguably, the most accomplished level achieved by British theatrical creativity is to be found in Miracle and Mystery Plays performed during the Middle Ages. This is for three reasons, which need to be considered together. Firstly, these productions were extremely successful combinations of art – poetry, drama, costume, instrumental music, dance, song – and as such embodied community attempts to embrace cohesive social symbols. Secondly, they took their subject matter from Myth; best understood as stylised imagistic narrative illuminating human experience at depth, in openly universalist terms. Indeed, the unique property of sacred story telling is that such performances express existential insight into the human condition for every man, woman and child, at all times. Also, these insights, no matter how terse or compact, proved inexhaustible in every age. Thirdly, each occasion for the performance had religious significance. Actually, they were staged by the Craft Guilds in order to display both their skills, as well as their status, on culturally significant occasions. Over time, therefore, traditions such as these became crystalized folk memory, preserving the struggles, along with the aspirations of a specific community through changing interpretation and redirected emphasis. Perhaps that is why Mystery Plays remain an important seasonal element of Fringe production to this day.

With the emergence of spiritual radicalism, wherein individual narrative began to replace collective performance, the notion of community Theatre gradually came into question. Theatre, it was argued, should be in a particular place where Plays were performed, and that while tangential issues, such as cultural education, outreach and social engagement were undeniably important, they should not be at the expense of this fundamental principle. In a similar vein, pundits continued, theatres must be administered in order for actors to perform, although it was stressed by these very same commentators that actors do not perform for the upkeep of Theatres. By the 1800’s, recognised critics had become correct, when complaining that funds were too often spent on paying down deficits, on better management, on marketing, and on vaguely ironic projects seeking to make Theatre more accessible. Yet, they seem to have felt the very purpose of theatre was found purely in self-expression as catharsis, coupled with the repeated enactment of social psychodrama. Clearly, Fringe as a distinct theatrical endeavour starts to splinter from these allegedly normative processes during this period, since it proclaimed the necessity of preserving performance as a multi-levelled dramatic engagement with an audience; an engagement which cannot be limited to the simplistic demands of entertainment.

Modern Fringe has inherited this mercurial stance from the great dramaturges of that time. It is experimentalist to the core. It even acts as a creative counter-balance to West End and Broadway productions. Moreover, contemporary Fringe embraces the cultural realities of an ethnically diverse Theatre scene. However, this adaptability has proved a curse as well as a blessing. On one hand, British Fringe is undergoing an atavistic renewal by going back to its localising origins. On the other hand, the near disintegration of a single, coherent symbolic narrative has simply managed to bewilder modern audiences by forcing them to choose between overly esoteric productions, or technically sophisticated trivia. In this sense, British Fringe Theatre has truly emerged as a folk laboratory.

Conclusion:

Clearly, fringe represents a lively alternative to the dreary consumer oriented drama programmes offered by Companies afraid to take artistic risks, or stretch the mind sets of their potential audiences. Moreover, our experience has taught us that people who pay to see a performance fully appreciate quality over spectacle, and usually resent the condescending attitudes of well-known impresarios. Our proof is found in the fact that fringe productions often become hits via word-of-mouth recommendation, as well as in evidence, which demonstrates that audiences repeatedly return to our performances.