Episode 5 The Arts Show

Hello and welcome to The Arts Show.

This month we are in the MAC in Belfast.

And yes, these are sweets but also art. More on that later.

Here's what's coming up on tonight's show.

Belfast's Queer Arts Festival, Outburst, is currently underway.

We examine how the gay community is reflected culturally

in contemporary Northern Ireland.

Our short film-makers have had international success

in recent times.

We shine a spotlight on the genre and ask,

is it more than simply a calling card to feature film?

And the Tarantino of opera shoots from the hip

about his controversial interpretation of Puccini's Turandot

in Belfast. I'm tweeting now...

Do join me.

Belfast's Queer Arts Festival, Outburst,

is now in its ninth year and still has two days left to run.

It is a time of great change,

the marriage equality vote in the Republic has opened up a new

debate and Northern Ireland is looking increasingly out of step.

So what has changed for gay people in Northern Ireland,

and what impact have those changes had on the city's cultural life?

David Grant reports.

Outburst. The very name demands attention.

The love that dared not speak its name is now declaring itself

loud and proud throughout the city,

in its galleries, on its stages and on its cinema screens.

It is a far cry from my memories of our virtual invisibility

on the first Belfast Pride march in the early 1990s.

My own gay play, Tangles, was boycotted in Dublin

and had its funding withdrawn.

Outburst started life in 2006.

Soon after, Belfast hosted the first gay civil partnership

ceremony in the UK.

And yet, the general euphoria around the Republic's

equal marriage referendum has served to highlight that Northern Ireland,

uniquely on these islands,

denies gay relationships equal status with their straight peers.

Outburst's programme this year is its most ambitious yet.

Highlights include Prime Cut's specially commissioned piece,

Scorch, from playwright Stacey Gregg.

Trouble, from artist and gay activist Shannon Yee,

giving voice to the experiences of people

growing up during the Troubles.

And a cabaret taking a wry look

at the apparent mainstreaming of gay life within society.

Middle Of The Road, to me,

is the place where we should all be finding sanctuary now.

I think a lot of us have been left-field and weird for long enough

and I feel now that we should stop all that.

We need to work out what way it is going to work...

Ruth McCarthy is Outburst's founding director.

I asked her, in the light of all these changes,

who does she think the Outburst Festival is now for?

The short answer is, Outburst is for everyone.

Up to 40% of our audiences now do not identify

as LGB or T, we know this, which is wonderful.

But it is primarily a space where we in the LGBT community,

and LGBT artists, queer artists, can play, can bring new ideas.

Where we can explore queer experience in all its nuances

and not just a kind of a black

and white that we sometimes get to see in the media.

Where we can explore what diversity

and difference is really about, and do that through the arts.

Stacey Gregg's Scorch seems to be a play that negotiates those

complexities with great skill.

What's wonderful about Scorch is that it deals with

the issue of gender identity.

The central character doesn't say for definite that they are trans or

that they are gender neutral or that

they are maybe just a wee butch lesbian.

It doesn't have any tidy answers.

My girl, Jules.

I do wonder if liking girls means I am "un homo"!

But I don't know any real ones yet.

Just convince myself, I will probably get a boyfriend

one day, like, when I have to.

A recent Channel 4 survey said that 50% of young people

no longer identify as heterosexual.

That's really interesting.

There's an understanding these days that sexual orientation

and gender identity is a far more complex issue than just

straight, gay or even throw bi in the mix.

As the success of The Queen of Ireland,

the new film about Panti Bliss has made clear,

gay people are becoming ever more visible in public life in Ireland.

And yet, many of our stories remain untold.

Shannon Yee has been working hard

to reclaim some of that missing history.

As her producer Niall Rea tells me,

it's getting some of Northern Ireland's leading actors

into Trouble.

We've got a lot of actors into Trouble.

The first two actors I asked, actually, were Marie Jones

and Ian McElhinney.

They were very happy and delighted to say yes,

especially with it being the 10th anniversary of the first

civil partnership in the UK, which happened at Belfast City Hall.

It is actually Shannon's own anniversary as well.

You're making a huge personal leap of faith with

the creation of the Barracks.

This is investing in the arts in a time of contracting resources.

What has given you the confidence?

I knew this kind of space was needed for the arts community,

both queer and the wider arts community.

There needed to be a cheap, artist-led volunteer-run space.

TheatreofplucK, my company,

was the first publicly funded gay theatre company in Ireland.

So I thought, why shouldn't it have the first purpose-built gay space?

We will get right back to you, OK?

Sadly, both Outburst

and TheatreofplucK have recently learnt that promised

investment from the Arts Council,

aimed at ensuring sustainability of both organisations, is now in doubt.

It will certainly be ironic

if a diversion of funds intended to support minorities

means that these gay oriented projects lose out.

So despite the clear sense of progress in Outburst's

nine-year history, I asked Ruth McCarthy

how much she felt had really changed.

I think what has changed hugely

is the confidence of the LGBT community.

I think a lot more people are willing to say

we have had enough now.

And there are a lot more people willing to stand up

and come out to their families, and we do know that change

happens more readily when you know somebody who is gay.

I think the more we grow in confidence as a community,

and the more we celebrate

the diversity of voices that there is in the community,

cos it's not a homogenous community,

I think the more confidence we have,

that is when things will change more.

Despite the growing confidence of the audience

that Outburst seeks to serve,

its sheer diversity makes including everyone quite a challenge.

I still wonder how many of those people walking for equal marriage

at the City Hall would have engaged with the term "queer",

and in particular, I suspect there may be a proportion of

people who identify as gay who would not be comfortable with that label.

Maybe seven, eight, nine years ago that would have been the case.

Much less so now. The term has become much more acceptable.

There is a charity in Belfast called QueerSpace.

You talked about Queer at Queen's.

In fact, the bar we are in often use the term "the queer quarter"

to identify this plethora of LGBT friendly venues around this area.

The term queer is becoming much more accepted, I believe.

We are all so different and all of that needs to be celebrated

but I don't think there is a hierarchy of what is more

important than the other.

Yes, of course there will be spaces where people feel uncomfortable

and that is OK, we need to be OK with uncomfortable as well.

For nearly a decade, Outburst has provided a vibrant

showcase for queer culture in Belfast.

It will be interesting to see if changing social attitudes

eventually make it unnecessary.

While shining an international light on gay issues is this major

exhibition by Cuban-born American artist Felix Gonzales-Torres.

Whilst filling out the MAC's galleries this winter,

his work also features on billboards right across the city.

The curator is Eoin Dara.

Who was Felix Gonzales-Torres?

Felix was a Cuban-born American artist who spent

most of his adult life and career based out of New York.

He made most of his artworks at a very particular social

and political moment in the US in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The artworks could very broadly be described as sculpture

in a lot of ways.

But not sculpture in any easily understood definition of that word.

What is he trying to do with the silver wrapped sweets?

The sculpture or artwork that you are speaking about is

Untitled (Lover Boys).

The work exists in the installation of what Felix called an ideal

weight of 355lbs of candy, dropped in a gallery space.

Configured in whatever way a curator pleases.

And that represented his weight and his partner's weight?

At the ideal weight that Felix specified,

that's where you kind of find that allegorical portrait element

where it is the combined weight of himself and his partner at the time.

He was dealing with very specific issues around AIDS,

around that huge crisis of identity

in America in the 1990s.

How relevant is that to Northern Ireland today?

As an individual, at that time,

he was heavily involved in community activism

and collaborative practice with other artist groups,

highlighting issues within society that weren't being

talked about enough, such as the AIDS crisis,

and I've think that those ideas all come forth in his artworks,

those ideas are all still present in the artworks

that are in the MAC today.

It's that challenging of accepted norms,

that fight is more relevant than ever, I feel, in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland has a strong track record in short filmmaking,

producing Oscar and Bafta award-winning films

and numerous nominations.

But while we clearly punch well above our weight,

is it a genre in its own right, or an apprenticeship for feature films?

Daniel Dewsbury investigates.

RHYTHMIC FOOT TAPPING

In 1997, Tim Loane and Dave Duggan's Dance, Lexie, Dance

was nominated for Best Live Action Short at the 70th Academy Awards.

Turn that thing down, will you?

In the years since, a level of self belief has been generated

amongst short film makers here.

The North has no shortage of artistic and technical talent,

and it would seem their work is reaching an international audience.

In 2011, Michael Creagh's film about a young boy's infatuation

with his teacher, The Crush, received an Oscar nomination

after winning Best Short at the Foyle Film Festival.

Does this mean we're engaged?

It's gaining on us!

In 2012, Terry George and his daughter Oorlagh took the Oscar

for Best Live Action short, The Shore.

Marm!

Then, in 2014, Brian Falconer and Michael Lennox

won the Bafta for Boogaloo And Graham,

which then went on to get an Oscar nomination.

-Everyone has a dog, no-one has chickens!

-Exactly.

First of all, it's been an amazing year for me,

cos Boogaloo And Graham aligned with my first feature, so they helped

impact each other, so for me, in the last year,

I've taken a massive step,

I think, in working professionally, but for me,

the main thing was that, in London and America,

people would be taking me a bit more seriously.

People know that there's Hollywood productions

happening on their doorstep here,

but I think what we did with Boogaloo And Graham is,

these young film makers have seen us and kind of gone, like,

"I know that guy", and suddenly realise, "I could do that."

The reality of it is, if you have a good script

and you have a good director and you've organised it well,

you can do it, and I think that's what we've shown people.

Is the goal always to make features, or do you think there's something

about the short film that still excites you?

For me, I plan to make another short film starting next year.

I make short films, you know, every year. It's not to say,

once I get a first feature film I'll never make a short.

They're just two different aspects of filmmaking,

and I think Northern Ireland has proved in the last few years

-we're good at making short films.

-For people starting out,

shorts is a platform where you can make mistakes.

There's little risk of it stopping your career.

It's a place for people to learn if they like making films,

if they're good at it, and what's happened with the film industry

here over the past five years, nobody would have predicted,

but it's time for the indigenous film makers to take over, you know,

and to start actually producing feature films by Northern Irish

writers, Northern Irish directors and Northern Irish producers.

If you look at the last three films from here that have been

Oscar-nominated, they make people laugh.

BOYS SCREAM

-MOTHER:

-Get into that bathroom!

I've been guilty of making so many depressing short films.

It's taken me a long time to realise that there are other

emotions in the spectrum.

When we made Boogaloo And Graham, I look back and I was just like,

"We've cracked it", you know? It's comedy.

Comedy is the thing that reaches out to everyone.

PIANO MELODY

Aislinn Clark is an experienced short filmmaker, and at the end

of this month production will start on her first feature.

I think short film is a useful place for filmmakers

to play around with things that you might not be able

to play around with in feature-length filmmaking.

PIANO MELODY

If you are making a short, you can take the opportunity to be

a bit more experimental, try things out a bit more.

I think shorts are definitely an important way of getting

you in shape for making a feature.

I don't think anybody would be advised to go off

and make a feature without having made a short.

A lot of people see it as just being a mini version of a feature film,

but actually, short films are their own complete thing and they can

and should be taken in that spirit.

I think short film is definitely an important step towards building

a reputation internationally for film in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland is an extremely vibrant place

for filmmaking at the minute.

It's a very exciting place make for filmmaking right now,

and I think the ripples are echoing across the world.

PIANO MUSIC

Like many local filmmakers,

Aislinn has received funding from Northern Ireland Screen,

the agency responsible for directing public money into film production.

To develop the sector generally, you have to create opportunities.

Short films are a great opportunity for,

particularly, writers and directors.

This single, strategic focus we have for short films

at Northern Ireland Screen is to impress on those making

the films that they need to have a purpose.

Not everybody will like me saying this, but from a strategic

point of view, they're not an end in themselves for us.

Yet there are a range of other genres -

documentary, art and experimental films, animation -

which don't fit so readily into this very industry-based view.

I think, for me, I look at the short film as a poetic work of art.

Back in the day when I went to film school,

a short film was ten minutes. It was for cinema. It had to be cinematic.

It had to have mise en scene, it had to have a narrative arc,

a turning point, maybe a gag, maybe a joke,

maybe a revelation at the end.

It's not necessarily financial, is not necessarily fame.

It might just be too tell a little story about your cat, I don't know.

The city I know was built in the global age.

When the world was already round.

Stuart Sloan is a local filmmaker

and also one of the founders of Second Chance Cinema.

Part of the reason we wanted to start screening films

is because there's so little opportunity in Belfast.

And what opportunity there is sometimes gets

dominated by funded films, or a bigger-budget films.

The city of 20 years ago is being erased slowly.

Sometimes when you make a film, you spend all those hours,

and you just put it on YouTube,

and people kind of watch it while doing something else.

That kind of devalues it a little bit.

We show things a dedicated cinema space.

In darkness, lights off, comfy seats.

That gives a certain validity to the films themselves.

And as a film-maker, that's often all you get.

And it's worth it for that.

The success of a number of narrative shorts over the last 20 years

shows what can be achieved with funding and support.

But the industry won't provide for everything.

And developing a really vibrant filmgoing culture means

enabling other voices.

With money coming in from the commercial sector, the next step

is to build up the diversity of films made and seen here.

Puccini's Opera, Turandot, best known for its aria Nessun Dorma,

was recently staged in Belfast by Northern Ireland Opera

in its first international coproduction.

It was a radical reinterpretation by Calixto Bieito,

who's been described as Europe's most over-the-top director.

He's firmly part of the contemporary opera world,

which renovates traditional opera in increasingly shocking

and sensational ways.

I met him on opening night.

OPERA MUSIC

Very dramatic, but pretty gruesome!

Unfortunately, sometimes the grotesque

and the sense of menace took away from the traditional story.

Pretty theatrical, pretty gory, and a bit shocking in places.

It's shocking, it's bloody, it's violent.

I don't think it's bloody or shocking. I don't think so.

What I'm trying to do with Puccini is to be very near to the music,

because this is probably my favourite opera of Puccini.

I'm trying to express the emotions inside the music.

I'm never thinking that I will shock the audience with that.

Newspapers are shocking me much more than any opera or any piece of art.

I think, first of all, Calixto's interpretation isn't just about

shocking, and it's not just about blood and gore and all those things.

Although there is a lot of that.

There is a lot of that, but I think there probably would be in any

production of Turandot, actually.

But I think that what's more important is that it's a very

sophisticated take on the opera.

I think this is very, very clear -

this is something which has a huge amount of integrity.

As well as something which is disturbing.

I thought it was exploitative.

I thought it was unnecessarily violent.

The setting was obviously a bit controversial.

I thought the idea of moving the scene of the opera

to Revolutionary China was a good one.

But some of the other special effects were over the top,

for me, and I thought they stood in the way of following the music.

I'm a bit of a traditionalist, to be honest.

I like to see operas in the period in which they're set.

Why is it important though,

to resite a traditional opera in a contemporary context?

What is really important is the will inside of yourself

to put this opera to the audience today.

Otherwise the opera, it will die.

You can say, "Listen, I like much more the opera where it is

"with wonderful costumes like in Disney."

I like much more the show like this done in this direction.

This is just a question of taste.

What the director was trying to do with this production was to

make sure that the setting wasn't something which was just

a fairytale. That it was a setting we could relate to.

And he did this by replacing the action away from that

into a more contemporary setting, in a factory, where the workers

are downtrodden, they have no rights, they have no wages.

Again, they're completely subservient to the

person in charge, in this case, the boss.

I guess this is what Turandot is in this particular interpretation.

And he draws some very, very startling

and relevant parallels by doing this.

I think it makes it much more fresh and much more contemporary.

I think that's important, and I think that's good.

It means that opera doesn't just become about escapism,

but it becomes about people's lives, and life as it is now.

Fantastic! Absolutely fantastic. Very moving.

The torture was really quite believable.

Your body could actually feel it.

I've been talking to people who've said, "I didn't come to see that."

I think there are images in the interpretation which

-I have certainly never seen on stage before.

-Like what?

There is a scene whereby a woman is on the stage,

and it's very clear that she's been the victim of sexual assault.

I think that what's Calixto's doing by interrupting

the piece in this way is making sure that some of the undercurrents

of the piece, where total power is very,

very brutalising for the people who exercise it, as well as for

the people who are the victims of it, is absently at the forefront.

I think that is something which we see now, we see brutal regimes

and the way they treat people, the way which, often women,

in particular, are treated, when people have complete power.

# But if you strip her naked... #

The original version was hard to beat. Really.

It's a beautiful piece of music, and I couldn't understand why

anybody would want to do some of the things they did.

I wonder what Puccini would have thought of it?

It's very difficult, of course, to know exactly what Puccini wanted.

Often people say, "One should just do what the composer wanted,"

and it's impossible to know what composer would have wanted.

I think what we are doing is making sure those themes,

those undercurrents in the original work

have meaning for a contemporary audience.

I think as soon as one starts to put productions in period costumes,

I think there is a distance between what's on stage and the audience,

simply because people don't recognise these people.

I think it becomes an event which is something else.

And I think an artistic event has to be challenging.

It brings opera, which is very traditional,

into a very modern setting.

And maybe opening it up to a wider audience, which is good.

So opera should shock, it should provoke, it should make people react?

Opera must make people feel emotions.

I think the nearest thing to God is music.

Music has to provoke this feeling.

And, when you go home, if you think what you saw in this opera

and you can have a good discussion with your friends,

this is what opera has to do.

-Calixto, thank you.

-Thank you.

MUSIC: Nessun Dorma

As we said earlier, Nessun Dorma is Turandot's most famous aria.

The Art Show thought it would be fun if a member of the cast went

along to Cliftonville football ground to sing it at an Irish League game.

You can watch our video online.

HE HOLDS A TRIUMPHANT NOTE

APPLAUSE

And staying with opera - few in the audience will have seen as many

productions as Belfast man, Richard Clarke.

Turandot was his 528th opera,

and he's kept the programmes of every production he's been to see.

It's a collection that reflects a lifelong passion that began in 1945.

MUSIC: Marriage Of Figaro (Overture) by Mozart

I just love opera. I love the sound of it.

The Sadler's Wells Company came over here, and they did three operas.

Boheme, Butterfly and, surprisingly, The Bartered Bride.

I got to see all these.

At that time I was at school, and it was just across the road.

And I went quite often.

I had some pocket money, but I also had dinner money.

And the money for the dinner,

I very rarely spent on school dinners.

I had a Mars bar instead.

And the money would be then available, either for buying

gramophone records, or coming to the opera here.

Talk to me about Maria Callas,

-because you have a signed photograph of her as well?

-Yes.

Did you like her a lot? Was she your favourite?

Yes, she was.

She had a great emotional intensity, that she could put into something.

So where else in the world did you go to? What other famous opera houses?

Bayreuth, Wagner's home for a long period, was a great attraction.

We sat through the whole of The Ring, twice.

In those days you could get into Bayreuth.

Nowadays, there's a waiting list for tickets.

But this was the first post-war festival.

I still have the programmes and the ticket stubs,

which I stuck into an album.

What has putting this collection together meant to you?

In the last few weeks, it has stirred up all my old memories,

and made me think of the great operas I've seen,

and the great characters I've seen in them.

This is a rich archive of opera history, from the late 1940s,

right up to present day.

Do you think young people are as passionate as you were about opera?

Sadly, they're not. You see very few young people at any of these things.

It's mostly the grey-haired brigade.

Your children, what do they make of your collection?

Well, they're not interested, just at all.

They're not interested in opera or the archives of opera.

So I'll have to find a good home for all my material.

And The Art Show is pleased to reveal that Richard is

donating his collection to Northern Ireland Opera,

which will make it available online in due course.

And that's it for this month, we're back in December,

with a special tribute to Brian Friel.

And the conversation continues now on Twitter

and on BBC Radio Ulster,

Tuesdays-Fridays, at 6.30pm.

Until next time, good night.