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cosmolinguistThe other day, diffrentcolours spotted something happening as part of the Manchester International Festival that he thought might be relevant to us: a stage show called The Faggots and Their Friends Between the Revolutions.
Described by Artforum as a "fairytale-cum-manifesto", The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions is a series of allegorical vignettes set in the declining empire of Ramrod, ruled by "the men" (patriarchal society) under the rule of Warren-And-His-Fuckpole, while the eponymous "faggots" (gay men) live communally, produce art, have sex, and await the next revolution. Their "friends" include the "strong women" (feminists), the "queens" (drag queens), the "women who love women" (lesbians), and the "faeries" (the Radical Faeries), among others. Distinct from the faggots are the "queer men" – gay men who are closeted, or who have assimilated into patriarchal society. The novel is primarily non-narrative, and is composed largely of a combination of single-page episodes, polemic writing, and aphorisms.
I was surprised because I'd only heard the words of this title in this order a few days earlier: a friend who works in a library in another country said he wasn't content with having read this book from there and now wants his own copy. This was enough to be intriguing, and I was also keen to finally go to an audio-described live performance, so he and I got tickets and went this afternoon (sadly mother_bones wasn't well enough to join us).
It was amazing.
I wasn't expecting it to be so musical! It was through-composed -- everything was sung (in a very 20th-century style, and the queer politics felt very 20th-century to me too), and not fitting the patterns of melody or chord progressions in the sense that such things are typically understood by people who listen to pop or blues or showtunes or whatever.
It leaves you -- well, me anyway -- without specific musical memories: no tunes you're humming or earworms stuck in your head, just more nebulous feelings. D said it felt "joyous, liberating, magickal and interactive, we all got to have a sing song."
I don't know if the interactive part was specific to this performance, because one of the cast members who told us about the rules of this relaxed performance told us she'd check on us halfway through (there was no intermission), when she did so told us we should learn the song. Even as we were learning it, it was difficult to keep track of the melody and timing of the words. Even as she was teaching it, she forgot a line or two in the middle.
One of the most delightful things for me about the whole performance was that I could hear the person doing the audio description say "I think she has missed a line" in confirmation after the performer said "uh, I think I forgot a line when I was teaching you this song..." Also I could occasionally hear bits of the audio description person singing along with the rest of us. I loved that.
The many performers sang and danced and played an impressive array of instruments: not just hints like violin and flute and piano but harpsichord and viola de gamba. This musical diversity was matched by other kinds of visible diversity in race and gender presentations (including fabulous costume changes).
We chose this over yesterday's performance because today had audio description. For which I was incredibly grateful because I would've missed so much without it that I wouldn't have had nearly as good a time. It was my first time experiencing audio description at a live event, and I was really curious to see how it worked. A similar experience to the cinema (a wireless headset that's picky about where you sit/how you move your head sometimes) but of course different in other ways: the description has to be done live too, it's not just another audio track like on a movie. The description still fit around the "dialogue" as much as possible as it would in a movie or TV show.
Not that this was a play with dialogue in the usual sense: there weren't characters coming and going and speaking to each other etc. They were more like epic poets, telling us stories, and they were their own Greek chorus too. As well as their own pit orchestra like I've described, and their own choreographed dance troupe.
D and I talked afterward about how the casting must have been very stringent in some ways -- big demands on everyone for singing, dance/movement, playing instruments, etc. -- but could also be very flexible in others: the performers could be of any age, ethnicity, gender, appearance... Indeed there didn't even seem to need to be this particular number of them: you'd want a biggish group but it could easily vary by 5 or 10 and still convey a similarly meaningful performance.
Yet everyone's individuality did matter: Yandas* was a strong and captivating physical presence so she moved around a lot, Dipa* was an operatic singer so used her voice to stunning effect especially when singing words like "faggot" or "fuck" which made people laugh because we aren't used to words like that sounding like they're in an opera. (I understand that opera, like Shakespeare, was popular entertainment in its day, and just treated like impossibly highbrow and inaccessible now, so I thought it was totally appropriate to hear such words given such treatment.)
It was great and I wish more of you could see it. I think a lot of you would like it, but also I just want more people to talk about it with!
*I'm guessing at how these names are spelled by the way; I only heard them in the audio description. It was never even clear to me if they were character names at all, or perhaps the performers' names, because there weren't really characters here. (The flautist was called Eric, and every time the describer said his name I jumped a little, as if I'd been called on in a meeting and wasn't prepared.)