The Artistic Director of Australia’s award-winning Back to Back Theatre Company speaks to Paul F Cockburn about the shows he’s bringing to this August’s Edinburgh International Festival.
“We’re a theatre company that doesn’t work from existing scripts,” explains Bruce Gladwin, the Artistic Director of Back to Back Theatre – a successful Australian theatre company for performers with learning difficulties, which is bringing two shows to the Edinburgh International Festival this August.
“The work is created through improvisation between the actors and myself as the director,” he says. “Originally, with what became Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, we had an objective to make a work which had no dialogue, no text, so we were spending a lot of our time drawing in the rehearsal room.”
During this process, one of the company’s actors was constantly drawing Ganesh, the Elephant-headed Hindu god of overcoming obstacles. Meantime, experiments with the distorting potential of a PA system had inspired thoughts of Nazi rallies; these ideas suddenly fused when the company discovered that the Swastika was originally an ancient Hindu symbol associated with wealth, prosperity and good luck.
“Very quickly we conceived the idea of Ganesh travelling to Nazi Germany to reclaim the Swastika,” adds Bruce, “but pretty soon we just thought there was no way we could do it, because there would be issues around representation of the Holocaust and dealing with cultural appropriation. So we sat on the idea for about two and a half years.”
Ganesh Versus the Third Reich finally took shape once Bruce had the idea of paralleling Ganesh’s journey to Nazi Germany with a fictionalised biography about the company coming to terms with what Bruce describes as “the moral and ethical issues of cultural appropriation and the machinations and abuses of power”.
“I got very excited about the idea of the relationships that exist in the fabric of our western society; of the very subtle power imbalances—which, when abuse takes place, are not so subtle—between, in this particular story, a director and a group of actors. Despite it’s epic notions, Ganesh has this very simple idea that, collectively, people can prevent violent actions or abuse continuing.”
The other work Back to Back Theatre are bringing to Edinburgh is The Democratic Set, a film project which has become a “framework for collaboration” with groups and communities around the world. While in the Scottish capital, Bruce will be working with Edinburgh-based Lung Ha’s Theatre Company.
“The project has a kind of idealistic concept—that performance, like democracy, allows people to be seen and heard,” says Bruce. “It’s really simple; an accumulation of 10-second performances, each on the same set within the same time frame. What I like about the project is that it both shows us the similarities between everyone but also highlights the differences.”
Although Back to Back Theatre has toured with great success touring new contemporary work around Europe, America and parts of Asia, Bruce admits that being invited to perform at the Edinburgh International Festival is “huge” for them.
“I don’t think we’re necessarily driven by ego or pride, but there’s something about going [to Edinburgh]—it’s been on our list as the one festival we’d really love, and be honoured, to present our work,” he says. “It’s been in existence for a long time [since 1947]. There’s a richness to it; in terms of the English-speaking world, Edinburgh is the top of the list.”
Ganesh Versus the Third Reich runs 9-12 August, Royal Lyceum Theatre. For more information, visit www.eif.co.uk or call 0131 473 2000. For access information and discounts visit eif.co.uk/access, call 0131 473 2089 or email access@eif.co.uk.
To explore The Democratic Set, visit http://democraticset.backtobacktheatre.com
First published by Access magazine (#16, June/July 2014).
