Performance cheese-tasting, the history of the 20th century in 70 minutes and a semaphore soap opera are among the delights on offer at this year’s Mayfest thesp riot. Steve Wright is our man waving the flags.

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 opposite, 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 (£4,000 – see www.wefund.co.uk/project/mayfest-2011 for updates or to donate). 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.”

MAYFEST TOOK PLACE FROM 5-15 MAY AT VARIOUS VENUES AROUND BRISTOL. FFI: WWW.MAYFESTBRISTOL.CO.UK 

High five

A few Mayfest ’11 highlights

Save Me Harbourside (Thur 5-Sun 15)

• Every Mayfest boasts one or two stand-out, off-the-wall delights – shows boasting Herculean staging demands (like last year’s ‘Electric Hotel’) or promising to subtly alter the emotional co-ordinates of all who see it (see last year, again, and the emotional, intimate ‘Internal’).

This year’s eye-catcher is ‘Save Me’, a semaphore soap opera performed, using giant flags, by Bristol performance duo Search Party. Performers Pete Phillips and Jodie Hawkes will converse over 11 days using the flag semaphore system, building up a narrative over time: audiences, bystanders, commuters and city strollers are invited to get involved and steer the story. “Often the audience try to manipulate the piece into a love story, offering advice on how we should make up or hold out for an apology,” says Pete, reflecting on past performances, including a session on London’s South Bank. “The mood is always very hopeful – the audience are willing the connection to succeed.”

SP will spend Mayfest on the Floating Harbour – Pete at Cascade Steps, Jodie on Pero’s Bridge – and will invite audiences and passers-by to decode messages and send their own. “You can engage with the performance in various ways – visually it’s quite arresting, which makes a nice contrast with the often day-to-day nature of the conversation.”

Pete recommends returning to the piece often over its 11-day run, to engage with its distinctive rolling narrative. Audiences are also invited to leave their own stories of when they have been apart from someone. “We provide tags and pens for people to leave their own stories as a memorial to the people they miss, which we’ll weave into the dialogue.”

 Flogging a Dead HorseTobacco Factory (Thur 5)

• Splendid news, this: a first Mayfest visit by those masters of pungent puppetry and on-stage oddity, Faulty Optic. FO have been renowned since the 80s for their highly visual adult puppetry theatre, with puppeteers hidden in the shadows dressed head to foot in black. ‘Flogging…’ focuses less on the puppets and more on those performers – two of whom stage a series of ridiculous scientific experiments in an attempt to unscramble the secrets of the brain. The puppets are subjected to a series of tests involving Rorschach blots, found sounds, miniature ping pong, embarrassing dances and more. “These slightly disturbing and disturbed figures are obviously being manipulated by the actors, as if they are part of some strange game,” explains FO founder Gavin Glover. “The performers are investigating the deepest, darkest recesses of the human brain – that hermit-like place where we can ponder life, indulge our personal philosophies and confuse fact with fiction.” Influences on the show include films like David Lynch’s nightmarish ‘Eraserhead’, Darren Aronofsky’s psychological thriller ‘Pi’ and the Woody Allen canon. “The title comes from the idiom meaning ‘to pursue a solution long realized to be unsolvable’,” says Gavin, “but the show is also, as the phrase conjures up, funny and touching, bizarre and cruel.”

Operation Greenfield Bristol Old Vic Studio (Fri 6-Sun 8)

• This one’s the latest from Little Bulb Theatre, a leftfield and hugely talented five-piece whose previous shows ‘Crocosmia’ and ‘Sporadical’ have drawn gasps of admiration in Bristol and beyond. Like those two, ‘Greenfield’ centres on the creativity and emotional turbulence of adolescence.

Somewhere in Middle England, four unlikely teenagers are preparing for judgment day – or, to be more precise, their town’s Annual Talent Competition. With a stage full of instruments and an eclectic mix of recorded music, Little Bulb explore faith, friendship and the confusing, awkward and naïve time of adolescence.

“We are a young company, so these themes of childhood are in our most immediate history, which gives us a fresh take on them,” explains director Alex Scott. “We're interested in how the creation of characters merges with our personal histories, so that a weird hybrid emerges – part persona, part character.”

‘Greenfield’, Alex says, gets to the core of the awkwardness of teenage life – and celebrates all the comedy and drama therein. “The portrayal of the young can so often be really badly handled on stage. A lot of shows tend to focus on a dark and very dramatic side to youth culture, whereas we’re more interested in exploring an unsensationalised world on a minute level – while at the same time running wild with a blend of fantasy and reality.

“We hope the story gently subverts your expectations about teenagers – especially Christian ones. The mood is constantly changing: funny, melodramatic, plain bizarre. It speaks to our own personal experiences and hopefully challenges the way we view and understand young people.”

After seeing the show at Edinburgh, The Guardian’s Lyn Gardner labelled the company “so recklessly talented you want to hug them and keep them safe in case they spoil. Their musicianship is superb, and their ability to conjure the pains of youth uncanny.”

Ousia Arnolfini (Thur 12-Sat 14)

• First performed at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe and now reworked specially for Mayfest, ‘Ousia’ (an ancient Greek word meaning ‘substance’ or ‘essence’) is a striking solo dance piece created by Darren Johnston, a choreographer whose immersive dance/theatre/installation hybrids have included collaborations with Aphex Twin and Squarepusher.

This one follows a solo dancer in a stark white room as she delves deep into her solitary existence. Through a hazy, strobe-filled space, and using a mix of holograms, dance and projection technology, the dancer’s ritualistic patterns slowly conjure up a clone-like avatar.

A mix of the magical and the monstrous, ‘Ousia’ sets out to recreate the world of the Victorian illusionist. “I've always been fascinated by illusion, otherworldliness and things that trick the eye,” says Johnston. “The wonderful thing about projection is that it allows you to do that.” Like his previous show, 2007’s “technology-led freak-show cabaret” ‘Outre’, ‘Ousia’ exists in a borderland between horror and loveliness. “It has the same levels of freakishness and suspense: you're not sure what you're seeing until the end. In the West, horror is always grotesque and disgusting [Johnston’s aesthetic was influenced by a period spent in Japan], but when it's depicted with beauty it's much more captivating.”

The Summer House Bristol Old Vic Studio (Thur 12-Sat 14)

• Devised by a quartet of gifted comic actors, this “comedy thriller” follows a stag do that ends up getting very weird indeed in the remote Icelandic wastes. ‘The Summer House’ is the brainchild of actor Neil Haigh (of Mayfest faves Cartoon de Salvo), Will Adamsdale (he of the splendid motivational-speaker skit ‘Jackson’s Way’), TV comic actor Matthew Steer and John Wright, founder of companies Trestle and Told By An Idiot. 

At the fag end of an epic stag weekend in Reykjavik, three men (including the groom and best man) travel through the dark, featureless Icelandic countryside to a remote summer house, apparently owned by one of the trio. Rather than the expected beers and hot-tub hedonism, what ensues involves a clash between the men’s high-tech, cosseted lifestyles and the ancient myths and spirits of Iceland. “These three are the last ones standing at the end of the night, not wanting the party to end,” Neil explains. “My character’s a kind of drifter, unlike the other two who are much more conventional: careers, family, so on. He takes them out to his ‘summer house’ and, as the evening goes on, you realise that there is more to this character than first meets the eye. The myths and pagan past are still very much alive in the landscape around them.”

Things also get more playful and fourth-wall-breaking as the evening goes on. “It becomes clear that even these actors are not in control of their world. We sow seeds in the audience’s minds and leave them to unravel mysteries and make connections.”

SEE ALSO PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

Copyright Steve Wright 2011