At a time when our public services and cultural heritage are being decimated by a government pursuing an ideology dressed up as 'necessary', festivals provide a place for people to come together, have a good time, talk and be inspired. Theatre is a powerful tool for reflecting on the state of things, whether in an overtly political way or more obliquely. It helps society learn about itself.” Wise and timely words from Matthew Austin, co-artistic director of Mayfest, Bristol’s annual and ever-more-ambitious festival of leftfield theatre.
Now a regular fixture on the UK’s cultural calendar after a decade’s existence, Mayfest is back once again this month, commandeering venues and unusual sites across town to present the very best local, national and international theatre and performance. This year the festival’s staging events at more venues than ever, from old hands like Bristol Old Vic, Arnolfini and the Tobacco Factory to Hamilton House, an empty College Green shop unit and a section of the Floating Harbour. As ever, the festival is bursting with weird and wonderful performances (27 of them, spread over the festival’s 11 days and 15-odd venues), but this year, in keeping with Matthew’s view of festivals as temporary communities, Mayfest also features its own café, artists’ talks, workshops, debates and other extra-mural delights.
Back to them shows, though. Apart from the five we’ve picked out, highlights from Mayfest ’11 include Epic (Tobacco Factory, Wed 11-Thur 12), in which four performers including Bristol’s Ed Rapley playfully condense the history of the 20th century into 70 minutes – including a run-in with Arthur Scargill and a grandfather on a torpedoed boat at the close of WWII. Also at the Factory is May (Fri 13-Sat 14), an arresting new dance theatre piece written by Tim Crouch (‘The Author’, ‘An Oak Tree’) and performed by acclaimed dance outfit Probe. Mixing live music, dance and a disturbing script, ‘May’ is a “modern-day romance” whose heroine is a woman living on the edge.
New city spaces colonised by this year’s Mayfest include The Parlour, a former shop unit on College Green that hosts Leo Kay’s It’s Like He’s Knocking (Tue 10-Sat 14), a stripped-back piece mixing storytelling, dance theatre and Afro-Brazilian percussion, set in a bedsit and unveiling a collage of moments from the lives of three generations of men. It’s inspired by Kay’s own family stories – including tales told to him about his migrant Jewish grandfather, a charming rogue and a troubled soul. Says Leo: “I wanted to make a piece that allowed me to celebrate and mourn my ancestry whilst exploring our attitudes and rituals surrounding death, something which I feel is neglected in our contemporary Western society.”
Bristol troupe Stand and Stare, meanwhile, give us the world's first, yessir, “theatrical cheese tasting” with The Guild of Cheesemakers (secret location, Fri 6-Sat 7), a joint effort with Trethowan’s Dairy and Hobbs House Bakery in which audiences will attend an important Guild meeting, tasting cheeses, learning from experts and uncovering the mystery of the inscrutable and much-prized 198 variety. You’ll also want to cast an eye over Tales from a Sea Journey (Tobacco Factory, Fri 6-Sun 8), in which pan-European troupe New International Encounter (and a creative team including Bjork’s lyricist) sew together nautical tales and legends from across Europe. In Something or Nothing (BOV Studio, Tue 10-Wed 11), meanwhile, Guy Dartnell – international award-winner and Improbable/Lone Twin Theatre associate artist – uses a mix of video, chalkboard lecture, storytelling, performance and stand-up to explore a fundamental error in our perceptions about ourselves.
The splendidly-titled Doris Day Can F*** Off (The Brewery, Thur 12-Fri 13), meanwhile, is the latest from Greg McLaren, whom Mayfesters will remember fondly for last year’s mind-bending, caravan-based game show ‘Famous Last Words’. This time, McLaren recounts his recent project to croon his way around the land, replacing all speech with song. And in The Invisible Journey (The Island, Tue 10-Thur 12), Doug Francisco – ringmaster of the brilliant, roving performance troupe The Invisible Circus – presents a cabaret-style rolling tableau of characters from his adventures performing around the globe, from Portuguese prisons to the Moroccan mountains.
Like so many others in today’s arts landscape, Mayfest – which receives Arts Council and Bristol City Council funding – must proceed, financially speaking, with caution. The festival recently mounted a campaign via crowd-funding website WeFund to ensure that this year’s ambitious programme could become a reality. So how is the ’fest’s financial state of health? “We've absolutely had to be more careful with budgets,” Matthew’s co-director Kate Yedigaroff acknowledges. “The WeFund campaign is still in progress, and we hope we reach our target. Crowd funding is a new thing, and it's been interesting to try it out. It's actually incredibly time-consuming spreading the word about the campaign, and there's a fine balance between gently nudging and bullying people to give money. You do come across the phenomenon of 'slacktivism' – where people re-tweet something or 'like' it on Facebook, but don't actually contribute, and there's a lot of work to do to turn that goodwill into hard cash.”
“Last year's Mayfest was the biggest one we've ever done, and was hugely successful,” Matthew reflects. “‘Electric Hotel’ [a dance show for which a three-storey hotel was constructed on the Harbourside] was the biggest project Kate and I had ever staged, and it exhausted us. There's always the temptation to carry on getting bigger and bigger, and people have been asking us what this year's ‘Electric Hotel’ is, but we think it's really important to not let the festival get too inflated – the quality of the experience is more important than the scale or the quantity of shows. So this year's programme is slightly smaller, although we don't think it'll feel much different. We're working with more venues than ever before, and we're paying particular attention to the bits around the shows – the talks, events, parties and so on. It feels important that it feels like a festival, and not just a collection of shows.”
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