Mark Fisher talks to James Brining, an artistic director who likes to take risks.
JAMES Brining does not strike you as a shy character, but his steps towards the full glare of Scotland's cultural limelight look cautious in the extreme. He's been in charge of TAG Theatre Company for nearly a year, yet the first the public will see of his work will be in the autumn. That's not to say he has not been busy. He arrived in Glasgow after a stint as community director at Richmond's Orange Tree Theatre, and was given just four weeks to prepare a four-year plan for the Scottish Arts Council. His efforts must have looked good, because TAG held on to its revenue funding, while neighbouring Glasgow touring company Wildcat was cut.
With that piece of bureaucratic speculation out of the way, Brining was straight into rehearsals for Worksong, an interactive schools production with script by John McGrath, in which the students became the workforce constructing an industrial heritage theme park, only to fall prey to unscrupulous employment practices themselves. I saw it at a school in Craigmillar, and enjoyed it a lot.
Since then, Brining has mounted a school tour of David Greig's Petra, about the murder of a Bosnian child, and is now two weeks into a school tour of Shaun Prendergast's Little Victories, a cheery and affecting show for nine-year-olds about coping with life, death, and other seismic changes. All shows have gone down favourably with teachers, children, and the occasional Herald reviewer, but adult audiences will have to wait until September's Othello to be let in on the secret.
That balance is a fair indication of Brining's priorities. He is not a man seeking fame, fortune, and the seal of adult approval. What he loves is the opportunity to create a wide range of high-quality theatre, which pays full respect to every audience irrespective of age.
''Othello will be a seven-week public tour, including two weeks at the Citizens' Theatre,'' he says. ''Performing in that context raises the profile of the company, but I'm not massively interested in it personally. In fact, I enjoy the freedom of going into schools and being able to take risks. The essence of theatre is an exchange of energy between performers and audience. Going into a school is raw theatre. That can sometimes mean it's a bit bloody - the other day a child vomited in the middle of the show - but it also means you can come up with extraordinary things you wouldn't expect.''
Little Victories is showing this week in the Scottish International Children's Festival, which begins today in several key Edinburgh
theatres. Like festival director Tony Reekie, James Brining is a firm believer that young people's theatre should be fun. If it educates or illuminates on the way, all well and good, but if adults don't go to the theatre to be taught a lesson, why should children? ''I read so many plays that are issue-based,'' he says. ''It's because they're easy to market to schools, and easy to direct the learning around the play. I've read so many plays about bullying, for example, which is a crucial issue in terms of young people's lives, and popular in terms of policy makers, and yet if a play is about bullying, it tends to be about nothing but bullying. That's not a true reflection of the real world. If you want to do something about bullying, do Twelfth Night, and talk about how Malvolio is treated. Good theatre, like good education, should be about asking questions without necessarily providing the
answers.''
It's a philosophy that extends to that now traditional tool of theatre in education, the workshop. Apart from hating the word - it makes him think of hammers and saws - Brining doesn't see why, if a show has done its job, it should have to be followed up with a two-hour analysis. A few schools on the Little Victories tour will be given a session looking at puppet and mask-making, but most will be content with the show alone.
Brining prefers participation to be part of the performance itself.
Now Little Victories is up and running, his thoughts are focused on Othello. Even as someone who studied Shakespeare for his English literature degree, he knows he might pick up only 40% of the language in any given production. With that in mind, he is determined to fashion a performance that makes the plot clear without compromising the beauty of the poetry.
''I chose Othello because it is one of the greatest pieces of dramatic
literature ever,'' he says, pointing out that the play is not on the school syllabus this year, so there's nothing opportunistic about the production. ''My hope is that we can make it exciting to young people, which isn't to say we're going to make it trendy, it just means we have to make good theatre.''
n Little Victories, Scottish International Children's Festival, Theatre Workshop, until Saturday, and touring schools until June 13.
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