The Arches Kicks Off BEHAVIOUR 2013 Program Today

Full listings:

The Arches and National Theatre of Scotland present:

ROB DRUMMOND: The Riot of Spring
Fri 10th + Sat 11th May | 7pm | £12/£10 | 60 mins | Tramway

- . Not knowing whether to be more appalled by Stravinsky's uncompromising experimentations in dissonance, tonality, rhythm and meter or by Vaslav Nijinsky's

unconventional, horizontal, pigeon-toed choreography, the Parisian audience reacted as their instincts told them. They rioted. Stravinsky and Nijinsky, it seemed, had succeeded in achieving the holy grail of art - they had created something entirely new.

One hundred years on Rob Drummond will work with a dancer and a musician to create a piece which will fuse written narrative theatre with dance and live music. A virgin is sacrificed for the good of a community, a group of tourists dance themselves to death in a city square and an artist drives himself to the brink of insanity in his quest to create something completely original.

Rob Drummond is an award-winning playwright, performer and theatre maker. His wide ranging work includes the critically acclaimed Wrestling, for which he trained as a professional wrestler and the magical theatre show Bullet Catch, which was a huge hit at last year's Edinburgh Fringe, winning both a Herald Angel and a Total Theatre Award.

GARY MCNAIR: Donald Robertson is Not a Stand Up Comedian Wed 3rd, Thu 4th + Sat 6th April | 7pm | 1hr | £8/£6 | Arches
Gary is a theatre maker.
He loves to laugh.

He would love to make you laugh. He is not a comedian.

As a solo performer, people often compare Gary's work to stand up comedy. He never knows quite how to take that. So, when given the chance to experiment with form on the Auteurs Project, he decided to find out more about comedy. He delved into the world of stand up.

THEATRE: BEHAVIOUR 2013

He watched 103 stand ups in clubs and countless more on recorded media. He travelled to London, New York and Dundee. He met with legends, wannabes and academics. He read 21 biographies, watched 12 documentaries. He's done it all - apart from getting up there and trying it himself. Until tonight.

During his exploration of comedy, he met a boy called Donald. Gary would like to tell you Donald's story.

Gary will also be curating and hosting a pop-up Comedy Club, Gary's Chuckle Hut: A space for trying and dying and facing fears... on 25th April, 5th & 9th May.

KIERAN HURLEY: Rantin

Devised and performed by Kieran Hurley, Gav Prentice, Julia Taudevin and Drew Wright (AKA Wounded Knee)

Wed 17th - Fri 19th April | 7.30pm 1hr | £8/£6 | Pearce Institute, Govan

A retired American steps off the plane at Prestwick, hoping to discover the land of his fathers.

A beleaguered politician in Edinburgh dips her feet into a hot bath.

An old drunk man in Peterhead has a mystical vision at the harbour.

A supermarket checkout girl in Port Glasgow approaches work with a baseball bat...

Part living room gathering, part play, part gig session, RANTIN draws on storytelling, live music and an unapologetically haphazard take on Scottish folk tradition, in an attempt to stitch together fragmented stories to reveal a botched patchwork of a nation.

CLAIRE CUNNINGHAM: Pink Mist
Thu 25th - Sat 27th April | 7pm (5.30pm on 27th) | 55 mins | £8/£6 | Arches It's all about weight. It's all about wait.

Stemming from research into the subject of landmines and conversations with landmine survivors and deminers on a recent journey through Cambodia (one of the world's most heavily mined countries); Pink Mist takes its time. Gradual creeping time. The kind of time it would take to slowly demine a strip of land one metre wide and ten metres long, crouched down, piercing the ground with a pointed metal probe at an angle of thirty degrees to a minimum depth of fifteen centimetres, when you can only move forward in maximum increments of three centimetres at a time.

In collaboration with sound artist Zoe Irvine and under the mentorship of Richard Layzell and Mish Weaver, this new work-in-progress from Claire Cunningham creates an environment that pulls our gaze to the ground and looks at the voids these objects leave- in time, in bodies, in the land and in our own certainty.

NIC GREEN: Shadowlands
Tue 30th Apr - Thu 2nd May | £8/£6 6.45pm pick up from Arches (return 9pm)
Nic Green's Shadowlands focuses on the phenomenon of 'waste' as both marvel and prodigy.

The matter of 'rubbish' is hidden away from our day to day. It exists in continuous flux, its definition and composition unstable and disrupted. How do these ignored landscapes relate to the landscapes of our cultural and personal psyche, the landscapes of our bodies and physicalities? Is there spirit in such matter?

How might we read the physical rubbish we hide away systemically as a metaphor for the self?

Nic Green has witnessed one hundred tons of rubbish being poured into a pit, and noticed the homework of a seven-year-old girl amongst the rubble. She has seen hillsides of cars piled up, and a single deer amongst them. She wondered about a chorus of children standing in a world of waste. And she read that the shadow ignored multiplies, and the one accepted, eventually dissipates and lightens.

This new site-specific work, part of the Auteurs Project, explores our relationship with waste and what we throw away. So we wade in.

The Arches Platform 18 Award

Platform 18 Winner Peter McMaster

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Tue 23rd - Sat 27th April | 8.30pm | 70mins | Arches

Featuring overly high drama, romantic violence, a touch of Yorkshire bleakness and a few alternative endings, this all-male performance revisits the landscapes and lives of the characters from Emily Bronte's classic novel, focusing particularly on Heathcliff's mysterious disappearance from the moors, and his subsequent return as 'a man'.

Created in collaboration with Murray Wason, Chris Hall, Nick Anderson and Thom Scullion, this poignant new work explores their own experiences of what it means to be a man living in the world today. This performance of Wuthering Heights has been developed since its first incarnation at Arches LIVE 2012.

Platform 18 Winner Amanda Monfrooe

POKE

Tue 23rd - Sat 27th April | 7pm | 70mins | Arches

In a vain contest for authority two women enslave the living world in a parade of individual power and dominance. Like goddesses of the ancient world they conjure and control nature, confident of their own supremacy. But their fantasy of power is undermined by the reality of their collapsing world. Forcing the women to reconcile or die.

Poke is a darkly humorous, allegorical performance project from Amanda Monfrooe, creator of How Keanu Reeves Saved the World and The Great Disappointment of Santa MuertA. Puppetry and music contribute to a macabre tale that carefully parallels the escalating sexual violence and environmental destruction that has marked the first decade of the 21st century. A surreal, visual performance exposing the cultural fictions that permit - and even encourage - our destruction of the planet.

Poke and Wuthering Heights can be seen as a double bill at Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from 1st - 3rd May. www.traverse.co.uk

Arches Brick Award Winner

#TORYCORE

Sat 11th May | 9pm | £5 | Glad Cafe, Shawlands | 18+

Performed by Lucy Ellinson, Chris Thorpe and Steve Lawson. Lyrics by George Osborne and the architects of austerity. Ever wondered what George Osborne's 2012 budget speech would sound like performed by a death metal band?

Part gig, pArt Theatre, part political rally, #TORYCORE is a new take on Conservative politics and its effect on British society. Incorporating the text of Osborne's speech as he announced his programme of austerity, a list of peers who voted for NHS reform together with their links to private healthcare companies and damning evidence straight from Hansard, this performance delivers an almost cathartic venting of feelings against today's government. This is music beyond protest: a live band, playing a pounding, nihilistic, muddy, discoordinated, brutal, subverbal deathgrowl.

Peggy Shaw: RUFF

Wed 10th April | 8.30pm | 1hr 15mins | £12/£10 | Arches

RUFF is the latest in a line of Peggy Shaw's solo performances, this time written with long term collaborator Lois Weaver (Split Britches).

Peggy Shaw had a stroke in January 2011. The stroke was in her pons, which rhymes with The Fonz, one of her many early role models, and since the stroke she's realized she has never really performed solo.

She has always had a host of crooners, lounge singers, movie stars, rock and roll bands and eccentric family members living inside her.

RUFF is a tribute to those who have kept her company these 68 years, a lament for the absence of those who disappeared into the dark holes left behind by the stroke and a celebration that her brain is able to fill the blank green screens with new insights and an opportunity to share them with her favourite confidants - the audience.

Renowned for her own gender bending autobiographical work, Peggy Shaw's supremely transgressive art explodes every box which might be used in some vain attempt to contain her: language, societal norms, sex, fashion, romance, art - she breathes life into all of them and there is nothing but surprise and pleasure in store for anyone encountering her.

A workshop accompanying Ruff will be held at The Creative Space at the Western Infirmary, Glasgow - please visit www.thearches.co.uk for further details.

Supported by Art in Hospital in association with the Medical Humanities Research Centre, University of Glasgow.

Gob Squad presents:

KITCHEN - YOU'VE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD

Fri 3rd May | 7.30pm | 1hr 40 mins | £14/£10 | Tramway

It's 1965 and everything is just about to happen.

Pop, subculture, superstars, feminism, drugs, bright lights and sex are about to rock the world like never before. Gob Squad take the hand of the King Of Pop himself, Andy Warhol, and take a trip back to the underground cinemas of New York City, back to where it all began.

Gob Squad's Kitchen takes one of Warhol's films, Kitchen, as its starting point. Nothing much happens in the original film yet it somehow encapsulates the hedonistic experimental energy of the swinging sixties. Learning lines was considered 'old fashioned' so the actors just hang around. Sex, drugs and wild parties are referred to but nothing in particular takes place.

Gob Squad set themselves the task of reconstructing Kitchen and other Warhol films such as Eat, Sleep and Screen Test. How can they get it just right?

How do they know if they're going wrong? How did people dance in 1965? What did they talk about? Had feminism happened? Or was it yet to begin? A quest for the original, the authentic, the here and now, the real me, the real you, the hidden depths beneath the shiny surfaces of modern life.

TAYLOR MAC

Sat 4th & Sun 5th May | 7pm | 1hr30mins | £12/10 | Arches

Arches favourite Taylor Mac returns to the festival, performing political songs from the 20th Century in his truly incomparable style.

In this special show, Taylor spans the entire 20th century of popular music, focussing on political songs from around the world and settling the Scottish independence issue once and for all.

Immigration, offshore drilling and marriage equality will be covered during the encore.
Taylor Mac last appeared at the Arches in 2010 with Comparison Is Violence or The Ziggy Stardust meets Tiny Tim Songbook.

Mammalian Diving Reflex:

ALL THE SEX I'VE EVER HAD

Thu 9th May | 7.30pm Fri 10th May | 8.45pm Sat 11th May | 3pm | £12/£10 | 2hrs | Arches

Let's talk about sex, baby. Senior citizens from Glasgow are going to talk all about it: the evolution of their sexuality over the course of their lives, the current state of their romantic affairs; their challenges and pleasures. Join our panel of elders and hear the experiences of an entire lifetime as they trigger conversations, field questions, play music and dance with the audience.

In our youth-obsessed culture, All the Sex I've Ever Had re-establishes a community of wise elders to whom we can turn for advice gleaned from their vast wealth of life expertise. The seniors have a lot to teach us, a lot to share, and show that ageing can yield a way of being in the world that is open, generous and fearless. Let's get it on.

From Mammalian Diving Reflex, the acclaimed innovative Canadian company behind last year's unique experience Haircuts By Children, which saw children cutting adults' hair at a Glasgow hair salon, comes a new show exploring society's attitudes to sex and old age.

If you are over 65 and would like to find out more about participating in this work please call Lucy on 0141 565 1011.

TRANNY & ROSEANNAH
Installation 12th March - 31st May Performance/Menu dates tbc - see wwww.thearches.co.uk for details.
Before Trinny & Susannah there was... Tranny & Roseannah! Style goddesses, lifestyle gurus and all round gender bending do-gooders.

Following the success of their revolutionary series How To Cook Good Naked, the Queen Mothers of makeover TV are bringing their culinary flair to the Arches Cafe Bar. With their unique taste and unparalleled insight, the debauched duo are completely redesigning both the venue and the menu*. Expect frocks, cocks, and a whole lot of shots.

*Please note: All dishes on the menu will be prepared naked

COMMON FUTURES

Sat 11th May | 11.30am-1.30pm | FREE | Arches

The Arches hosts a breakfast discussion about the future for artists.

The Arches turned 21 in 2012. But this is bigger than that. What does the future hold? What do we want for the future? It's about you, me, us, them... Let's begin the day by talking about what comes next.

Let's anticipate it.
A Commons discussion by and for artists about our futures, about what we want, need, fear. Hosted by a guest facilitator tbc.

Efterklang presents:

THE GHOST OF PIRAMIDA

Wed 10th April | 7pm | 55mins | FREE | Arches

Following the success of Efterklang's An Island, this new film by Andreas Koefoed documents the Danish band's visit to the abandoned Russian mining town where their latest record's inception began back in the summer of 2011. The band plays live at the Arches on 20th April.