Carla Keen responding to Number 1, The Plaza by GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN

Violently resisting plot

A response to GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN’s Number 1, The Plaza

It is a very human thing to seek stories.  Which is why it can be very unnerving watching shows which don’t provide them pre-packaged.  On the other hand, humans are very adept at making narratives for themselves given fragments, echoes and suggestions.  

It quickly became apparent that Number 1, The Plaza was an evening with format (albeit a grotesque parody of one); the performers referring to each other by their real names, playing off each other in a double act, taking on personae which become increasingly more extreme. Jen is dark and sullen, and as brutally honest as the vivacious blonde Lucy is attention-seeking. Like matter and anti-matter, the two clash creating a “metaphorical space” in which to play with the audience.

Lying, covering up and bullshitting their way through the show, they half-arsedly program their own lighting states, mess up duets and fool themselves that they have something to show. As audience we are left trying to make sense of these fragments of performance, unsure of where they were heading, and to what end, but compelled to watch two lost clowns trapped in their tiny flat.

In show with a relationship at its core, Jen and Lucy self-consciously demonstrate the mechanisms at work in theirs, from the status games they play, to their strange and intimate bonding rituals. Songs form emotional touchstones, rather than furthering any plot, much the same way as they do in musical theatre, demonstrating that, despite the appearance of chaos, they know exactly how to use the theatrical tools at their disposal.

To make your audience feel and think certain ways, arguably performers need to be at liberty to use every tool available, including nudity. And when Lucy exposed herself to the audience physically, I was left thinking, how long will she stay unclothed? I was waiting for the moment she would re-dress, put everything back in order and the show could continue without the feeling of awkwardness the nudity presented.  But of course, life isn’t like that and so she remains exposed, like the stage mechanics, throughout her curtain call. 

Joy Martin responding to Number 1, The Plaza by GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN

I’ve written about the Live Art company GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN before.  I saw their 2012 show Big Hits at the Cambridge Junction, and it was one of the most powerful pieces I had ever seen performed in the theatre up to that point.  It took one element of my mind – the part that up until then had quite sleepily accepted the inappropriate, hyper-sexualisation of women in the music industry – and slapped it awake, so that I walked out of the theatre feeling slapped, but grateful to be awake.  I spent the next several days looking at the way women are portrayed in music videos and thinking ‘That is just fucking insane.  And destructive to all the little girls (and big girls) who are drinking it in as “normal”’.  That show led to a permanent change in the way I perceive our culture, and I was very grateful for that and respectful of the artistic power that created it. 

So I was very eager to see their next show, and I was curious to see what issues they would choose to rumble next, and how they would use theatre (and the strange bag of tricks and techniques special to live art – abstraction, duration, awkwardness, shock, hyper-realism, etc.) to raise the issues and tangle with them.  GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN are Artistic Director Hester Chillingworth and performers Lucy McCormick and Jennifer Pick.  Their stated artistic mission is to make ‘broken genre performance’, and explore how ‘text does not always say what it says that it says it is saying.’

Their new show is called Number 1, The Plaza [insert link], and I saw it at the Cambridge Junction [insert link] last week, on 10 April 2014.  It was the first night of a Spring tour of the piece, which will take it to The ShowRoom, Chichester on April 24^th; BUZZCUT, Glasgow on April 26^th; Tom Thumb Theatre, Margate on May 23^rd; and Norwich Arts Centre on June 25^th.  More dates will probably be announced during the Spring. 

I settled into my seat in the Cambridge Junction curious, but also a little apprehensive – because last time they slapped me, conceptually, even though I knew it was for my own good.  Also, the mood music playing as the audience came into the theatre was ‘Send in the Clowns’ – a subtle opening tickle/provocation in the show’s performer/audience relationship.  It suggested, delicately, and within a honeyed coating, one of the themes that would emerge in the show: the power dynamic contained within entertainment and media – that once we came into the theatre, we were in their space, their house, and we were under their control. They were free to choose what they did with us once we were there – for example, insult us incredibly subtly as we took our seats.

One of the interesting things about live art is that it purposefully re-considers how the audience encounters the work.  For example, Big Hits was a purposefully awkward encounter for the audience.  In that piece GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN defused, straight away, the usual theatrical mechanisms that construct a sense of otherworldly enchantment that can take place in a theatre, like the darkening of house lights and bringing up of stage lights.  I remember that the first thing they did was stare at us without speaking, with the house lights up, for ages, which made me feel uncomfortable, and which dislodged any old-fashioned expectations or theatrical dreaminess that might have otherwise conditioned my mind ahead of the piece. 

This time around, in Number 1, The Plaza, I felt much more lulled, much more entertained, and also, seduced. There was smooth, jazzy music, with a lot of saxophone and synthesizers, and slinky, sparkly dresses.  There was humour and shiny, flowing hair extensions.  There was a drinks bar.  They opened with a show tune (Lucy has a great voice).  It was, as they would tell us, ‘An Evening With…’  This time around they invited us into their ‘house’, which I saw as a metaphor for their theatre space, for entertainment, for media, for the conceptual space over which they have complete control once the audience/performer relationship has been entered into by both parties.  The show would go on to explore the idea of the audience’s relationship to its entertainment via the portrayal of Lucy and Jen’s relationship with each other.  It was enacted as an intimate, seductive, power-imbalanced and conflict-laden relationship. 

The show shimmered with meta-levels about the idea of entertainment, using its entertainment of us (with songs, humour, sexy dresses) to comment on both the powers and the dangers of entertainment: it suggested that once someone is entertained, they can be in a sort of enchanted thrall and soaking in an implied and poisoned ethos embedded quietly in the entertainment.  But because they were using entertainment to give us this message, they were also exploring the positive  power of artistic entertainment to pull one’s consciousness forcibly by the hand, saying ‘come here with me to look – really, deeply look at this issue.’ 

And because they were exploring the power dynamic in the performer/media/audience relationship via Jen and Lucy’s relationship, the exploration expanded outward to include any sort of intimate relationship between two people, an artistic mechanism which gathered up the metaphorical material from personal relationships and heaved this back onto the performer/audience relationship.  It was a violent, abusive relationship.  At one point, they simply started physically fighting each other and freezing in long, held poses of conflict.  But amidst the fighting, they paused to embrace, kiss, lick, inhale the other person, in moments of intense, passionate connection.  When Jen started to be verbally abusive to Lucy (‘I fucking hate you, you little cunt’), Lucy’s humanity and sanity seemed to break down and apart.  It reflected powerfully back upon the media/audience relationship and made me consider where the entertainment that surrounds us in our society has the power to break down our humanity, and our sanity.  It also made me question passive acceptance of entertainment, and wonder how aware we are as a society of the subtle, implied messages in the media that surrounds us. 

As I first took my seat and realised that the melody gently piped into the atmosphere of the still lit, chatting and drinking audience space was ‘Send in the Clowns’, I had a quiet laugh to myself; but later the brilliance and delicacy of this choice struck me.  Its quietness, its underneath-ness, amplified a sense of the unseen, unrecognised power of implied messages in our entertainment.  Implied messages are powerful because they slip into our minds under the radar, underneath our ability to perceive…and fight them.  This opening was a statement about the power of the entertainer – the controller of the interaction, the chooser – and the lack of power of the audience, the absorber.  If they wanted to imply we were clowns, or call us clowns outright, or tell us to fuck off, or shit on the stage, or say that women were stupid, pointless animals, or dance around naked, or get naked and rub shit on each other, they could do it; and we would be held, mute, within the ideas embedded in our minds about our role as the audience in a relationship to a piece of theatre, bringing up the question of passivity in the audience role.  They could do, say, or imply whatever they wanted, and we would have to absorb it.  I’m not saying that they did any or all of those things, and I will leave it for you to wonder whether the show actually goes to any of those places, especially if you haven’t seen it yet – but the point they made is that they could have done all of that, if they wanted to. 

It is interesting to me that as I walked out of the show, my first impression was that the show didn’t contain the immediate, artistic coherence and power that Big Hits did.  But I realised later that the show was simply different and breathtakingly subtle and complex in its exploration of its themes.  So it worked a little differently on my psyche.  What happened was that its powerful, political, profound themes and coherent brilliance slipped into my mind via a backdoor, like an implied message – like  background music.

Lisa Buckby responding to Number 1, The Plaza by GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN

Number 1, The Plaza marks five years of GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN, a company who specialise in broken genre performance, hovering somewhere between live art and theatre. Performers Lucy McCormick and Jennifer Pick, along with director, Hester Chillingworth, have previously focused on looking out at the messed up world we live in, but have for this show decided to look in on their own lives, and especially Jen and Lucy’s dysfunctional relationship as performers, friends and housemates.

The show takes the form of “an evening with” the two of them, with songs, dancing and chatting. Clad in high heels and glitzy party dresses, Lucy and Jen welcome you in and show you around their London flat. Their hosting a party which you’re invited to, but soon enough you begin to feel like you don’t want to be there.

The third biggest presence on the stage after Jen & Lucy is their foul looking “chocolately mixture”, which used deliberately for its repulsive appearance, and at times as a representation of ‘what they produce’ as artists, as well as how they see the outside world. Over the course of the show, the virulent mixture is spread across the whole stage, and Jen and Lucy.

Most vivid though, is the real contrast between how Jen and Lucy treat each other, and we are exposed to the real vulnerability of Lucy, as Jen repeatedly puts her down. How many times can Lucy stand to be told to shut up and go away?

By choosing to use their own flat as the basis for their show, and with five years of work behind them, GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN are clearly at home in the theatre, and fear absolutely nothing.  Not necessarily the easiest piece to see if you are new to this company, but a perfect demonstration of what THE VAN is all about.

Kata Fulop responding to Number 1, The Plaza by GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN

Lucy and her partner are having a performance of a party and we are all invited. It is the Number 1: the Plaza by GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN at the Cambridge Junction. Lucy waves to us through her imaginary window, behind which we find her universe, the octagon of her London flat: door, bathroom, living room, couch, kitchen, door, bathroom, living room and soon. It is a strange post-feminist party performed by bubbly uber-feminine and stereotypically young- blond Lucy and her partner, master of one-liners, grunts and economical offences.

You may glide between the layers of performance.  There is the performance of a party, and show tunes, which act as deliberately awkward but quite frankly beautifully sang and marvellously ironic glue between scenes. One may experience a strange sense of déjà vu, and take a moment to reminisce about the duo’s last performance Big Hits, which as the title suggests was about “showbiz” .

More layers to come as Lucy’s bubbliness transforms into exaggerated submissiveness, and she is made to jump around and hide her, well yes, shit. As the performance goes on, the simple downwards spiral structure of the performance sucks you in. Slowly, the window is closed and the performers start to strip of their masks: the hair extensions come off, then the social mask. At the same time, the party gets smaller and smaller the audience less involved and at the end it is just the bare performers. Stripping reveals an unequal relation during which equality only strikes momentarily when the performers alternate in “doing”, routine-like pleasing of each other. The removal of social mask is followed by that of clothes, a flashback to submissive Lucy in stereotypical pornographic poses and a final cleansing shower.

As Lucy washes of her “performing Lucy” mask, and all the shit that comes with being, we are left to wonder about this complex yet silly show that unsurprisingly does not bite as much as we may think. I still wonder, how much more brutal and less layered the show would have been if Lucy’s partner was not performed by young woman in a skin-tight long red dress, but by a man?

John Boursnell responding to Number 1, The Plaza by GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN

No.1 The Plaza

Glory

I am watching two women wrestling each other on the floor.

It is violent, awkward, voyeuristic and a little pathetic.

I feel complicit; in not intervening, in just watching.

One of the women calls the other “a cunt”.

Just as spandex clad pro-wrestlers grandstand for the crowd,

there is perhaps showboating:

Look how shocking I can be.

How loud I can be.

Like the junkies you see screaming at each other on the market place

observed from a safe distance

Clutching cans of triple strength, volume making up for actual violence

But there is some actual violence here, I think

Certainly limbs and elbows and teeth and curses.

I am in a pub in Peckham, on a Saturday afternoon.

Endurance

I am watching two women wrestling each other on the floor

It feels violent, awkward, voyeuristic and a little pathetic.

I feel complicit; in not intervening, in just watching.

One of the women calls the other “a cunt”.

Just as spandex clad pro-wrestlers grandstand for the crowd,

there is perhaps showboating:

Look how shocking I can be.

How loud I can be.

Like the junkies you see screaming at each other on the market place

observed from a safe distance

Clutching cans of triple strength, volume making up for actual violence

But there is some actual violence here, I think

Certainly limbs and elbows and teeth and curses.

I am watching GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN perform “No 1 The Plaza”

at Cambridge Junction.

Where Art Meets Life.

Artifice

I am watching two women wrestling each other on the floor

[there is a white wash on the stage]

It feels violent, awkward, voyeuristic and a little pathetic.

[I know there is more lighting, because Lucy and Jen have been cycling through the lights, controlled at the back of the stage]

I feel complicit; in not intervening, in just watching.

[so I know I’m at the theatre.]

One of the women calls the other “a cunt”.

[Because I can see the mechanisms of the theatre exposed on the stage.]

Just as spandex clad pro-wrestlers grandstand for the crowd,

there is perhaps showboating:

[like swearing]

Look how shocking I can be.

[but undercut by humour]

How loud I can be.

[but undercut by humour]

Like the junkies you see screaming at each other on the market place

[but undercut – or reinforced – by repetition]

observed from a safe distance

[like a theatre seat]

Clutching cans of triple strength, volume making up for actual violence

[do you see what I did there?]

But there is some actual violence here, I think

[I’m drawing attention to the mechanisms that we use]

Certainly limbs and elbows and teeth and curses.

[and we can certainly see a lot of those]

I am watching GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN perform “No 1 The Plaza”

[a performance]

at Cambridge Junction.

[on the stage]

Where Art Meets Life.

[on the stage]

The banal

I am watching two women wrestling each other on the floor

[there is a white wash on the stage]

“Do me now”

It feels violent, awkward, voyeuristic and a little pathetic.

[I know there is more lighting, because Lucy and Jen have been cycling through the lights, controlled at the back of the stage]

“Oh there we are”

I feel complicit; in not intervening, in just watching.

[so I know I’m at the theatre.]

“Call that woman in the second row a cunt”

One of the women calls the other “a cunt”.

[Because I can see the mechanisms of the theatre exposed on the stage.]

“These really ARE the chairs from our kitchen”

Just as spandex clad pro-wrestlers grandstand for the crowd,

there is perhaps showboating:

[like swearing]

“Get the fuck out of my house”

Look how shocking I can be.

[but undercut by humour]

“You don’t really mean that”

How loud I can be.

[but undercut by humour]

“You don’t really mean that”

Like the junkies you see screaming at each other on the market place

[but undercut – or reinforced – by repetition]

“This isn’t really shit”

observed from a safe distance

[like a theatre seat]

“Get the fuck out of my house”

Clutching cans of triple strength, volume making up for actual violence

[do you see what I did there?]

“This isn’t really shit, it’s Nutella”

But there is some actual violence here, I think

[I’m drawing attention to the mechanisms that we use]

“I hate you”

Certainly limbs and elbows and teeth and curses.

[and we can certainly see a lot of those]

“You don’t really mean that”

I am watching GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN perform “No 1 The Plaza”

[a performance]

“We’re back on the stage”

at Cambridge Junction.

[on the stage]

“It’s good to be back”

Where Art Meets Life.

[on the stage]

“It’s good to be back”

Molly Flynn responding to Number 1, The Plaza by GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN

In 'Number 1, the Plaza', performance art collective Get in the Back of the Van invite their audiences in, 'right in' as they say, to enjoy an evening of songs, stories and scatology. Decked out in high-heels and slinky evening wear, duo Lucy McCormick and Jennifer Pick appear on the bare stage undisturbed by the fact that their bodies and faces are smeared with what appears to be shit.

Their comedic timing is awkwardly impeccable, as they present themselves as hosts of the unusual evening about to unfold. There is little sense in parsing the show's narrative threads, especially since there is hardly one to hold onto. The performance rather revolves around the disturbingly co-dependent relationship between the two women; McCormkick who chats up the audience and her stage partner, seeking approval from any available source, and Pick who slings (thankfully) nothing but insults and sarcastic one-liners in return.

The audience is eventually keyed into the fact that the evening's festivities are meant to be taking place in the couple's home, and that we have in fact been cast as guests in the most-erotically-nightmarish house party on earth. By fixing our gaze through the show's 'tiny peephole', as described by the couple, we become complicit in the depraved dynamic between them and, what's most troubling, is that we kind of like it.

'Number 1, the Plaza' adeptly treads the line between fascination and repulsion. It's a smart and skillful assault on decency. In this sexy, sloppy sojourn into discovering our dirtiest little secrets, Pick and McCormack ask their audiences to examine the most vile parts of themselves and, like them, to do it in public. 

Laura Ortu responding to Number 1, The Plaza by GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN

You will get stuck in the loop of a very absurd and unconventional relationship between two very unconventional friends. Jen and Lucy  will invite you in their “shitty” world, manipulative, silly, grotesque and somehow ironical if not banal. Constantly provocative by any means, they certainly have still the ability to create the shock effect, you will get involved, addicted, curios and mostly disgusted, and yet rejected. No one can understand their silly world, you might get intimate with the “house code”, and indeed nothing is quite expected although sometime might become tedious and pretentious. Perhaps is it a reading of today’s middle class adults? The relationship can be very hard to handle, they can be hard to handle, especially when boundaries are crossed and pushed to the extreme. Their provocation call stretches the limit of what human being can take on, a meaningless provocation that had to get along with the “stuff like that” going on the stage. It is a work of destruction, it shows a climax of deconstruction of a life made of beauty. The endurance of the disruptiveness breaks the bond of the two friends and yet keeps them together. Furthermore they  break the relationship with the audience, who feels no welcome when the friendship on stage become openly intimate and ultimately it reveals its on “cracks” and yet it simply keeps going on. It is  very achieving in terms of juxtaposition, love and hate, banal and provocative, musical and distorted, illusive and disappointing, manipulative and fake. It is a rally coaster of silliness hard to die.

A call-out for writers

The responses on this site are the product of the people who responded to this call for interested writers in March and April 2014:

Are you interested in writing / blogging about contemporary performance? Do you want to work with some of the UK’s best arts writers? Want to publish on your own blog, or write for Slate The Disco? Want to discuss theatre and dance with interesting people?

As part of Cambridge Junction’s commitment to arts in the region, we are seeking to develop a critical ecology around contemporary performance, which we believe is lacking in the area. It’s vital for the cultural life of the city for shared understanding, for audiences’ context, legacy of the shows, development of the artists presenting the work, as well as profile-raising for the artists and sometimes the venue.

Writing about performance doesn’t need to be in the form a traditional review; we’re interested in all kinds of responses, reflecting the variety of performance made. Perhaps it doesn’t even need to be written?

This season, to kick start this, we are offering three workshops with professional theatre writers, tied into shows in the season:

· Thursday 10^th April - Workshop with Matt Trueman watching GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN – Number 1, The Plaza

· Thursday 24^th April –Workshop with Maddy Costa, watching 30 Bird – Domestic Labour: A Study in Love

· Tuesday 20^th May – Workshop with Donald Hutera, watching Igor and Moreno – Idiot-Synchrasy

  Each workshop will take roughly the following form:

· 6.00pm – meet to discuss views and functions of writing and expectations of the show

· 7.30pm – watch the show together        

· After the show – discuss initial reactions to the performance.

· Once a response has been written in the next few days, the workshop leader will be able to feed back on the writing via email, and discussion can continue at next workshop.

All these workshops (and the tickets) are offered free of charge, but we ask that you commit to attending all three workshops, if at all possible.

We are also offering two free tickets to any theatre and dance shows here that you are interested in writing about, as long as you commit to publishing a response online within a week after the show, sending us a link to it, and doing the same for at least 3 shows this season. (If the offer of free tickets confuses the response into a transaction for you, you’re welcome to buy.)