While the West End offers a range of mostly static spaces – and a mostly static imagination for the kind of work it typically embraces that nowadays seems to rely mainly on adapting films into musicals or increasingly plays – it is, as ever, on the peripheries that the more challenging work is happening, stretching forms, buildings, artists and repertoires, as well as making rediscoveries from the past that the commercial theatre has already forgotten about.
One of the biggest movements of the last ten years has been the widespread development of site-specific work and found spaces, both neatly colliding in this week’s opening of Punchdrunk’s The Masque of the Red Death, which saw BAC – a venue that is itself a found space, converted out of a former town hall – turned into a site-specific place that is the first of three “Playground Projects” that the venue is set to host over a five-year period, the goal of which is, in the words of BAC’s press material, “to open up the Town Hall and create a 21st-century flexible performance space by seeing the building though the eyes of artists and audiences.” [click below to continue]
But while this wholesale take-over (and make-over) of the building is happening, what is happening to BAC’s other role as nurturer of new, emerging companies? BAC has always been an experimental hub for British theatre, and as long as it is being colonised by Punchdrunk, its studio work is presumably on hold, or at least the public offerings of it necessasrily are since there’s nowhere to show it.
The joy of the fringe, though, is that it can stretch from this kind of big, bold work – with a cast of 28, and created with an army of 200 volunteers plus nightly teams of volunteer ushers – to fully-realised musicals in the tiny rooms above pubs like the Finborough in Earl’s Court (the recent When Midnight Strikes) and Landor in Clapham (the current I Love You Because). Then there’s the kind of West End programming – and West End-ready production values – of a place like the Menier Chocolate Factory, which opened an exemplary revival of Patrick Marber’s Dealer’s Choice last night. It is, of course, just a stone’s throw from Shakespeare’s Globe and a few minutes walk from the National and Old Vic. And it’s now been a full-time producing theatre in its own right for a while now, not drawing in product from elsewhere.
It’s therefore odd to find the Menier continuing to be listed under Time Out’s “fringe” umbrella – the third of the divisions into which London’s theatres are rather arbitrarily divided. Though it’s not stated, there’s a kind of qualitative assumption behind the divisions, and by the time you get to Fringe, you proceed “at you own risk” (Time Out are no longer committed, either, to ensuring that they review everything in this third category, either).
But I’m at a loss to work out what their criteria for putting venues into each category is. If Off-West End embraces venues that receive subsidy and are producing theatres, what is the King’s Head (mainly a receiving house nowadays) and Greenwich (ditto) doing here, while the Menier (unsubsidised but a producing theatre) and the Unicorn (which is both subsidised and producing their own work, in one of the fringe’s most impressive purpose-built buildings) regarded as fringe? This week’s Time Out theatre section is, in fact, led by an interview with Patrick Marber – there because of the production of Dealer’s Choice at the Menier – but of course Marber is a star in his own right. But if the Menier is good enough for Marber and he’s good enough to be the lead feature, surely it’s time to look again at where the Menier is listed.
The Masque of the Red Death has indeed transformed BAC's Old Town Hall home into a vast gothic installation. Punchdrunk’s and BAC’s The Masque of the Red Death is part of a series of Playground Projects at BAC over the next five years that give us the opportunity to see the building through artists’ eyes and engage BAC audiences at the heart of creating a world class 21st century performance space in partnership with Steve Tompkins: Haworth Tompkins Architects.
But the part of the story you’re missing Mark is that, far from ousting BAC’s ongoing programme, the Playground Projects are designed to embrace BAC’s programme, enhance it, develop it...
For example, as part of our first playground project, BAC has also created Studio 68, a cabaret theatre space with its own bar, host and unique atmosphere, with an eclectic line-up of award-winning studio work from September through till January. The Studio 68 programme includes Will Adamsdale, 1927, Station House Opera, John Hegley, Bohman Bothers, Hannah Ringham, Scratch Nights etc...all running as part of Playground Project 1.
Even the Red Death show itself includes many BAC related artists creating Poe inspired work in two special commission spaces inside the world of the show. One of the ideas behind creating these spaces is to enable experimental theatre artists to reach a much wider audience. This achievement is perhaps best characterised when Lundahl & Seitl (an experimental installation duo) received two glowing paragraphs about them in a review about The Masque of the Red Death review in..wait for it...the Mail on Sunday. When else would experimental theatre artists receive a rave review in the Mail on Sunday?! Audience’s too are commenting enthusiastically about this rich experience...of seeing more than one artist’s work in a night. BAC has always known that the work of these theatre artists is deeply accessible and exciting...it’s just a matter of providing the right context for others to discover their work...
These BAC commission spaces will also include work by BAC’s Young People's Theatre this Autumn. While the Old Town Hall is open every day for people walking in to the Café Bar for drinks, lunch or meetings, and our spaces continue to be shared with dozens of community groups who continue to use the building as a valuable local resource holding crèches, classes and workshops of all descriptions, tea dances and carol concerts amongst other activities. Next week the after party for The Masque of the Red Death will be a Ceilidh...in partnership with a guy who runs these regular events in our Grand Hall. Our Playground Projects are about using the building in new and exciting ways and aim to grow our existing programme while trying out new ideas and collaborations. I'd welcome you to see for yourself Mark...do come and see a show in Studio 68.