Tim Crouch on the current state of theatre: "The arts are not about winning and losing"
My play, An Oak Tree, has reached the age of majority. 18 years. Old enough now to buy itself a drink. And yet, last night at the Lyceum Studio theatre, a new second actor stepped on stage with me and the play felt like a newborn again. As it does at each performance. Like Bambi learning to walk, it grapples with instability and doubt. It fails as much as it succeeds. Or, rather, its failure is its success. Each second actor has no knowledge of the play when they join me on stage. I tell them beforehand that there’s no right way to do it. No right way and no wrong way. Its vulnerability is its strength. After 18 years, I realise that something in the play is trying to resist a seemingly immovable notion of success that I believe has had a hand in weakening the role of culture in the UK.
An Oak Tree is an embodiment of that overworked call by Samuel Beckett to ‘fail better’. I’ve been reminded of Beckett’s words by the story of Georgie Grier who posted her distress at playing to an audience of one at a Fringe venue. Her teary photo generated such a social media response that her next performance was entirely sold out. Call me a contrarian, but something about this makes me think that the performance Georgie gave to that one person might have been more interesting (more successful, even?) than the full house. She might have been more fragile, more uncertain, more porous - all qualities that I long for in a performer. Her single audience member might have felt more spoken to, more held, more acknowledged. The late artist Adrian Howells made works for audiences of one and they were the very best of us.
But the fringe is a bear pit. It demands a success indicated by numbers and scale and commercial value and standing ovations and star-ratings: the optics of certainty, the absence of failure. In this respect, the Fringe sometimes feels like it has more in common with a partisan rally than an arts festival. Make Theatre Great Again. Fringe performers dressed in eye-catching costumes, striking poses, vying for attention, waving banners, five stars. It’s an inspiring sight and the competition for audiences in the free-market of the fringe makes it inevitable. But is it working? Is the argument for theatre being won by this bustle in the long term? This fever pitch of positivity rings hollow in the context of a UK arts industry which is on its knees. Sometimes Edinburgh Fringe feels like it’s the band playing as the ship sinks.
An Oak Tree was in Avignon Festival last month. Avignon has many parallels to Edinburgh. Both festivals created in 1947. Like Edinburgh, Avignon has an international festival (the ‘In’) and a fringe (the ‘Off’). One late night in Avignon, in a narrow crowded street, I met the French Minister of Culture, Rima Abdul Malak, on her way to see a show in the ‘Off’. Can you imagine her UK counterpart in that situation in Edinburgh? Rima has been involved with the arts throughout her career. She is knowledgeable and passionate about them; she understands their fragility. The current UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lucy Frazer, is a barrister and former financial secretary to the treasury with no particular expressed interest in the arts. Like so many previous incumbents, her appointment reads like a stepping stone to other things. We’ve had 12 Secretaries of State in ten years. The danger with the Edinburgh Fringe is that the government sees the optics of success from a distance and thinks that everything’s okay with the arts – look, it’s fine, they think, they’re getting on without us, they’re happy to bankrupt themselves on the rents, to be paid nothing, five stars, standing ovations. Of course the Fringe provides a unique opportunity for getting work seen and shared, for bringing a community together, but it must also be our responsibility here to argue for the support that makes failure possible and supported. The arts are not about winning and losing; they’re not about shoring up, they’re about breaking down. Let’s not do the things that we know will succeed each time. Let’s step into the unknown. Let’s fail better.
An Oak Tree, Lyceum Studio, 8.30pm, until 27 August