Its tough admitting to being a follower of theatre. When you aren't fighting off people's anecdotes of that brilliant time they went to see Saturday Night Fever with the girls, or asking whether you want to be in Eastenders, you find yourself at the end of rants about how modern performance is pretentious twaddle with a load of people running around in black spandex and white faces.
Its hard. For the everyday Bob on the street all theatre and performance seems to fit in one of the two aforementioned categories i.e West End glitz, or arty shit. But for those who haven't seen some truly innovative work, or haven't had the pleasure of experiencing ground-breaking productions, a certain cynicism is understandable. But, for those who are seemingly part of the industry itself and who should be not only supporting artistic experiments, but encouraging and spreading awareness of them, it really is not cricket.
Skip to Clare Allfree's preview of this year's Spill Festival of Performance featured in Wednesday's Metro. Not only does she acknowledge the prejudices suffered by anyone striving for to create something different, she openly supports them. Clare love, using terms like 'God Help Us' to describe Mime work really doesn't help anyone. Maybe if you were a bit more specific and described particular awful examples of this art form it would be understandable, but to try and write off years and years of boundary-breaking work with three words is petty, childish and totally nonconstructive.
Rather than trying to get a cheap laugh from philistine tube riders do what you're job is and show make people aware of the fact that rather than being pretentious and concept driven, work featured as part of this festival actually could just open their eyes and alter all perceptions. It may be a harder task, but who said that life was easy?
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