Naima Khan talks to Getinthebackofthevan about their performance about performance and the sheer weirdness that is Sprint Fetival at Camden People's Theatre.
Sprint Festival asks a lot of questions. It pokes a lot of fun and has a habit of turning themes inside out and upside down. I’ve heard whispers of the 2010 craziness and the programme for 2011 looks brilliantly bizarre. I chatted to one of this year’s companies, the aggressively named Getinthebackofthevan, as they attempt to explain External, their performance about performance.
The Van consists of performers and collaborators Lucy McCormick and Jennifer Pick directed by Hester Chillingworth. They currently reside at Battersea Arts Centre where I join (read: interrupt) their breakfast to try and get my head around their show External.
Breakfast is a cosy affair consisting mostly of toast, Alpen bars and lots of jam, and Sprint too, the girls say, is one of the cosier theatre festivals. “We looked at last year’s acts and thought, if we’re at Sprint, we’re in good company,” says Chillingsworth. She’s right. It helped launch Shunt, the company who rocked London Bridge with Money and turned the ICA upside down with their live weekend of performance art. It also formed a significant stage in the careers of Cartoon de Salvo, the people behind Pub Rock, a show and a company that has artistic risk at the heart of their work, just like The Van.
Borne out of a response to Ontroerend Goed’s Internal, External exposes the audience to two theatre-makers and their attempts to entertain. Internal had its most recent London performance at One-on-One Festival where it invited participants on a kind of speed date that ended with the 'audience' receiving an honest, sometimes damningly harsh assessment of themselves via the performer.
External, it would seem, presents an honest assessment of theatre-makers. Lucy and fellow performer and collaborator Jennifer Pick have vastly different ideas on how to entertain, but together on stage, they’ll do their best to put on a show. “A show with a capital S,” says Chillingworth as though that makes things clearer. “Wigs,” she says, “costumes, like a big West End show. Except we don’t have the budget, so not like a West End show at all really. But External plays with the parts that make up those big shows.”
There’s an absence of egos and an excess of ideas in my conversation with The Van; they’re not even that horrified when I suggest including a can-can, but the nature of entertainment is only part of what they’re looking at. They also open up the performers behind the show.
“Lucy and Jen play Lucy and Jen,” they tell me. “They’re not characters exactly but they’re not themselves. In most shows you don’t see what goes on when the performers aren’t on stage. You don’t know anything about their broken boiler or their shit day and you’re not supposed to. But we’re not interested in hiding that”. I suspect that’s why audience members have returned several times to this show (with a capital S), because it’s open and vulnerable in the same way audience members are with Internal.
This year, Getinthebackofthevan are joined by Greg McLaren singing in Doris Day Can Fuck Off, The Uncle Hans Peter Party by Let Me Feel Your Finger First and TheHonourable Society of Faster Craftswomen with Patchwork.
In case you haven’t worked it out, Sprint refuses to comply to our expectations. It’s inconsistent and can be highly irritating but it’s also fascinating, unforgettable and embraces the idea of a shared experience in theatre. Which has got to be a good thing, right?
Sprint runs at Camden People’s Theatre until 27th March.
External will be performed on Wednesday 9th and Thursday 10th March at 8pm. Click here for tickets.
Image: by Laura Rugg
Click here for more Fringe Theatre in London
Click here for Theatre in London
Click here for Things to do in London
Add an event
Frieze Art Fair to launch new section for young galleries in 2012
Frieze have today announced details for the 2012 edition, their tenth art fair in London. Taking place...