theatreVOICE

The symposium on the work of Howard Barker held at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (the RSAMD) in Glasgow on May 24, 2008 (which is now streamed on theatrevoice.com) offers some important insights into Barker’s thoughts about his theatre, its international success and its neglect by the English theatre establishment. It also provides us with fascinating references to some of the many influences which have played into and through Barker’s complex, assiduously European aesthetic.
   There is in the conversation – as in Barker’s incisive and profound theoretical writings on theatre – an insistence on the need for ambiguity, difficulty and a moral, political and intellectual openness in live drama. It is impossible, I would suggest, to listen to Barker’s discourse on these subjects and still maintain – as some theatre directors and critics in London appear to do – that his theatre is, somehow, wilfully obscure and controversialist. In fact – like his plays and his various theoretical, poetic, philosophical and autobiographical writings on theatre – the writer’s comments express a profound and brilliant understanding of the enduring power of tragedy in the theatre which exposes the essentially adolescent nature of the prevalent twins of English (and British?) theatre; namely naturalism and liberal humanism.
   Barker’s observation that “Scotland is a European country and England is, unfortunately, not one” is interesting in the context of the very different attitudes to his work which predominate north and south of the border. One should not overstate Barker’s acclaim in Scotland; he does not enjoy the status of Harold Pinter, for example, or even, g-d help us, Alan Bennett. This, however, has much to do with the extraordinary influence of London theatre, not only in England, but throughout Britain.
   The fact remains, however, that Barker’s theatre holds a position in Scottish theatre which is akin to that which it holds in other European countries, but not in England. Prominent Barkeristas in Scotland include Hugh Hodgart, Head of Acting at the RSAMD, (who has directed no fewer than 11 Barker plays at the Academy), Dominic Hill, artistic director of the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh (who directed an acclaimed production of Barker’s Scenes From an Execution at Dundee Rep in 2004), and, of course, actor and director Kenny Ireland (a founder member of Barker’s theatre company The Wrestling School, and director of the highly successful production of Barker’s play Victory at the Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh in 2002); the tensions within the artistic relationship between Ireland and Barker are illuminated, from Barker’s perspective, in the book A Style and Its Origins.
   Nor is this a matter of mere nationality. Hill is English and from London, but his admiration and passion for Barker’s theatre sits far more comfortably in the Scottish theatre milieu than it would in London.
   Barker’s explanation of the self-assured tone in his theoretical writings and his commentary on his theatre as a “carapace” to protect him from the hostility of the London theatre establishment and critics is also fascinating. He is aware, as he says, that some people may consider it self-dramatising to suggest that the alternative to his robust defence of his art was suicide; however, there is a direct parallel with the great Japanese film-maker Akira Kurosawa, who attempted to commit suicide in 1971 in the face of a torrent of abusive criticism within Japan which held his work to be “too western”, and which succeeded, to a considerable extent, in marginalising him.
   The symposium gives us Barker speaking in the erudite, intelligently robust and powerfully incisive terms that those who know his theatre would expect. For those of us – such as Hugh Hodgart and myself – who are not afraid to say that we revere Howard Barker and consider him a genius of modern theatre, having the writer as our guest in Glasgow was a tremendous honour and privilege.
   Those who are less familiar with Barker’s oeuvre will find that many of his plays have been republished recently by Oberon. His own theoretical, poetic and philosophical writings on theatre and his own Theatre of Catastrophe are also a veritable goldmine; I recommend Arguments for a Theatre; Death, The One and The Art of Theatre; and A Style and Its Origins (his extraordinary work of personal and artistic autobiography, written, in the third person, under the heteronymous nom de plume Eduardo Houth).

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 3:04 pm, by Mark Brown and is filed under Audio 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.