THERE is something stirring in Stirling. MacRobert Arts Centre chief Ed Robson outlined two initiatives to me when I recently caught up with him along with Edinburgh-based collective Mythography’s creative director Philo Cheynet.
Both were hot from a rehearsal – act three had just been printed – of their jointly devised production, Bull/Fight, around the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, the 20th-century poet who was assassinated by Franco’s regime in 1936. It’s a production born of Robson’s “long tradition of supporting the next generation of theatre artists,” and is due to run at Summerhall during the Fringe.
Having steered Cumbernauld Theatre into a new home prior to coming to the MacRobert, Robson has always attempted to “democratise access to institutions”. And so, the Macrobert has “opened the rehearsal room diary, free of charge for professional theatre-makers. These rehearsal rooms sit empty while small companies struggle. I’m trying to unlock infrastructural resources”.
Alongside this access, the MacRobert is going to be, “investing in a series of artist development projects, training schemes or small-scale level core productions, [meaning] mentoring support, cash investment, technical and producing support – things smaller companies can struggle with”.
Robson continues: “Over the coming couple of years, it might include a company in residence, co-productions, to support and enable the next generation. The more we open the doors, for whoever, that’s a good thing.
“The more they become insular, the less interesting buildings are.”
Based in Edinburgh, Mythography is one of the first recipients of Macrobert support and creative director Cheynet outlined their humble beginnings as they were formed from “a bunch of students”, approximately four and a half years ago.
Cheynet graduated in Edinburgh, and brought from her French upbringing “nerdy knowledge and passion for really dusty texts”.
In particular, Cheynet was fascinated by a Germanic Folk tale about a water nymph, Ondine, by the French playwright Giraudoux. “Somehow, I communicated my love and excitement of this translation that goes back hundreds of years,” she says.
“Being really new to theatre, [they] managed through instinct, discovery, trial and error to infuse it with so much life that, by the time we staged it, everyone in the company had fallen in love with theatre and the audience had fallen in love with a really dusty translation of Ondine!”
From that first triumph, they “grew organically to get a partnership with the French Institute for Antigone last year”.
For Mythography, this collaboration is a “first year of getting a professional hand extended our way, [and] grown to meet the outside world and start interacting with the industry”.
Robson had seen them at last year’s Fringe and “didn’t know anything about the work”, but was struck by how it was “unusual, interesting and exciting for a young company to be interested in dusty old tragedies about death, chaos, destruction and pain.
He adds: “It had a quality and collective commitment from an ensemble of younger theatre-makers. I was thinking, what did they remind me of?”
What they reminded him of was Lorca’s theatre company, La Barraca. “[Lorca] was the artistic director of a touring theatre company of young graduates touring great Spanish tragedies around the villages for years before the Civil War brought it to an end.
“There was this strong connection between these graduates that were driven by this passion and desire with the work that Lorca was doing.”
This comparison between two sets of artists decades apart was critical, as Robson expands on: “We felt we could create a show that would cross over, exploring core themes about the role of the artist and how Lorca expressed that in a time of civil conflict: all the things that cross over with great tragedies.”
Of the show, Robson was keen to stress, “it’s not a biography, but does rest on facts, then it takes a left turn and goes in a completely different direction as the best plays do”.
Cheynet, having been enticed into the collaboration, “had exactly the same thought: this is basically us”.
Struck by “the parallel between our company and La Barraca, our very sharp turn [is] into the poetry of tragedian, Lorca”.
That shift catapulted Lorca’s company, according to Robson, “from the naturalistic, to the heightened poetic text which allows them to carry on and keep moving, even though their world has dissolved”.
By rising above the ugliness to find beauty, hope in the destruction and find salvation, an act of resistance, is the voice of the end of the play: “They pack everything they own onto their backs and start this exodus. It’s driven.”
Cheynet enthusiastically agrees, “the company that lost their leader, some deported, some exiled, some murdered, were 21, 22 at that time – where we are!”
She explains that Mythography brought their emerging theatrical style in, “the idea of chorus and ensemble, movement, collective speech.
“Naturally, we become an ensemble of ghosts speaking poetry through a landscape – a strange transformation.
“The quality of the language and the register of his written work? I’m not going to resist that: those words you can hold like pebbles in your mouth.”
Lorca’s poetic approach is not that far removed from current heated battles.
“As a theatre-maker, you come back when everything else goes wrong; art’s what saves us – when politics and diplomacy fail us,” Robson muses.
Bull/Fight is a huge platform for Mythography, and while Cheynet thinks Robson has “taken a bit of a risk”, Robson is platforming change, noting that “talent just needs opportunity”.
It’s also an opportunity to have more than one person onstage as there is “something interesting about seeing six performers in a Fringe show, as a collective, dividing and creating their work together – you rarely see six people on a main stage now.”
As for Cheynet, “six is the smallest so far since the beginning. I always think there’s someone missing, but no, there’s just six of us.”
The six can be found in Bull/Fight at Summerhall from August 6 to 31 (not 17 or 24). For more information, visit https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/bull-fight
