About the Visual Artist

Keith McIntyre has created the artwork for several of Sounds of Progress’ recent works. What follows is an essay on the ideas behind the creation of the visual art in Sounds of Progress productions.

Keith McIntyre is a Visual Artist and Reader in Interdisciplinary Arts at Northumbria University.

Black Tears and Laughter Lines

The use of Visual Art in recent SOP projects

Dar Es Salaam, May 2004

It is 10am in the morning and the temperature is already in the low 90s. I am standing barefoot on a giant white tarpaulin that was once draped over a lorry. It has been re-cycled to become the backdrop for our new multi-media performance production 'Mfalme Juha' (The Mad King.)

The combination of heat and humidity makes for extremely uncomfortable working conditions. Elsewhere in the old Russian Cultural Centre, our studio and rehearsal base, the performers are somewhat ironically going through their morning 'warm-up'.

Meanwhile I am alone apart from two young Tanzanian children who watch on bemused as the white Scottish man is reduced to working in his underpants and vest. Bent over with a long paintbrush, I am drawing with black emulsion on the surface below creating a giant group composition of heads which will become Mfalme Juha's 'City of Madness'.

As I paint the sweat pours of my brow down onto the tarpaulin. Mixing water with the emulsion to help the flow of the medium becomes tedious, requiring me to stand straight. I quickly realise that the dripping sweat is providing a regular and adequate supply of liquid. No sooner as it falls down it is rapidly mixed into the paint. Indeed I begin to strategically shake my head in specific directions to deliver the droplet like tears onto the emerging image.

Several meters away I notice that the two young children have now erupted into laughter, each giggling away at the scene before them. The smaller child points to the newly painted surface and says something in Swahili to his friend. Their eyes open wide in astonishment.

I stand up and look across to the two boys. Smiling I ask the older child what they are laughing about.

"My friend" he says, now giggling again "my friend he has only ever seen two mzunga (white man) before."

Then, gesturing to the sweat coming from my head and being mixed into the black paint he says "He watches you make the painting and thinks that that you are really a black man under your skin"

Interpretation and misinterpretation can frequently become the starting point for new creative journeys in our imagination. The process of producing original writing, performance, music or visual art requires a healthy dose of curiosity and enquiry into the world that we live in and events that impact upon our daily experiences.

The importance of the unpredictable can never be underestimated; when one innocent little comment, observation or act can suddenly turn our world upside down, blur the boundaries between sense and non-sense, and ultimately stimulate and make us re-evaluate our own situation.

For most artists the laboratory or studio is a breeding ground for new ideas; a place where there is an emphasis on process and production; where ideas can be tried and tested; and, where new synergies and interdisciplinary practices can be explored.

The development of the visual aesthetic that emerged in both the 'HEID' and the 'Life, Stories and Dreams' projects can be traced back to Tanzania in 2003 when Gerry Mulgrew (Communicado Theatre Company) and the Ford Foundation USA invited Gordon Dougall (SOP) and I to work with 'Parapanda Arts Lab' in their home city of Dar es Salaam. The consequences of three Scottish artists working with a leading East African Arts company were never in doubt. To establish a new and novel performance style we would first have to explore and challenge the conventions of the workshop and rehearsal methodologies that were normal practice in our own cultures. We then had to develop creative strategies that synthesised the poetic rhythmic form of traditional African music and dance with contemporary European physical/visual theatre. Ultimately the discovery of a new and dynamic narrative style that holistically referenced all these sources was immensely rewarding and ultimately established a pattern for future collaborative projects.

Drawing remains a fundamental process at a time when the digital age dominates IT communication. Primarily it is about looking and speculative enquiry, where subjects can be investigated and concepts explained in simple visual terms. Somehow it seemed important to use drawing to bridge the language barrier between English and Swahili and to use simple graphic art techniques to articulate and realise the strange world of Mfalme Juha.

From the outset we created an art production space in the workshop / rehearsal environment where ideas that were being tested by the company could be recorded as visual documentation, and new drawings used as a way of informing the narrative and expressive direction. This activity was important as it embedded drawing and visual art as an integral part of the creative process.

The only materials that we took with us to Tanzania were 4 rolls of Fabriano cartridge paper (each 10m x 1.5m), a sketchbook and several bottles of black India ink. It was made quite clear to me in advance that access to art and production materials in Dar es Salaam would be extremely problematic. This proved to be true, and yet paradoxically, it was also a very liberating condition. In one sense it forced us to strip things back; to find succinct, economic and effective ways of telling a story; one that operated on many different levels with different meanings but with a polemic pertinent to contemporary Africa.

Two years later it seemed important to rekindle this process when Parapanda Arts Lab came over to Glasgow to collaborate with Sounds of Progress to create a new production. One that would revisit the workshop practices and the use of drawing in performance contexts developed in Dar es Salaam.

The ideas for "HEID" were developed over a four month period leading up to the arrival of Parapanda Arts Lab into Glasgow in January 2006. The lead concept was to be an examination of the complex inner workings of a head, or "heid" in Scots. Early drawings provided a useful platform for articulating potential paths for experimentation. Some familiar colloquial terms were transcribed in a suite of pen and black ink studies. For example; "Yer heids full o' mince"; "Big Heid"; "Sair Heid"; "Bangin yer heid against a wall"; and, "Heid in a good book".

Another suite of drawings were made from a Victorian phrenologists head where different aspects of our psychological make-up are printed onto the surface of a ceramic sculpture. Very quickly some of the drawings started to subvert the original meaning and broad Scots words were inserted like Boggin, Hame and Gadgie. This proved to be an important vehicle for further research. Before long the creative direction of the work in the studio was moving up in scale. A number of large drawings referencing African and Scottish culture were produced.

These would be used as props in the workshops and would eventually form part of the large collage that occupied the entire HEID set. As most of the drawings were backed onto foam board this provided a light but flexible play material (this was important given the disabilities of some of the company members.) By the time we were working in the MacRobert Theatre in Stirling, the dock area had become a studio production facility with images and props being drawn and created as the project was devised. Once we had found this visual aesthetic we knew that we could use black ink drawing to produce the often absurd dioramic world that the audience views and experiences. Indeed when we first see our lead character, a writer who has creative block, he is working at a laptop computer that is a drawn onto a shaped piece of foamboard. And, when the block materialises, it is in the form of a large drawing of a brick wall. Later when the company begins to analyse what is inside the writers head, a giant caricature appears, is cut open and the contents inside removed for inspection (a kilt, the writers brain, a bottle of whisky, the script, a lost pair of trousers.)

The synergy between drawing, performance and comedy is heightened by the black and white visual dynamic. This is not so much a homage to comic books but is more of a reference to the satirical graphic work from Victorian Punch publications and the etchings of Goya and Dix. Furthermore, the expressionistic qualities of the drawings in HEID set a context where both a company of artists with mixed disabilities and a visiting group of performers from Tanzania could challenge preconceived attitudes in contemporary society while discovering a new theatrical style and language.

Several months later and following the acclaimed tour of HEID we decided to test these processes still further in the new SOP / National Theatre of Scotland Connecting Communities project Life, Stories and Dreams.

Staged throughout the vast interior of Clydebank Town Hall, this one-off site specific production was devised with community groups in the Inverclyde area. The audience were magically whisked into the future and would be taken on a guided tour of previous SOP collaborations going back 50 years to 2006. As before, a number of drawings were prepared in response to workshops with some of the participating performers and group members. Fantasy dreams and ambitions were realised in the form of large drawings prepared as theatrical props. While these themes were diverse in their imaginations (a rocket to the moon; a giant set of goalkeepers gloves, a Tahitian dancers grass skirt) the articulation of the idea in drawing form on foam-board created a generic graphic style.

The largest artwork created for Life Stories and Dreams was an original floor cloth/ painting of a map of Scotland onto which were recorded dates and locations where SOP projects had taken place in the fictitious 50 year period. It covered the entire dance floor area. Moving across the painting by foot or on wheelchairs, the members of the company and their helpers wore white paper suits of the sort used by employees in the electronics industry. The contrast and symbolism of the white shapes in the austere interior of the Hall created an interesting futuristic chiaroscuro. It was as if Sounds of Progress had taken ownership of Scotland; left its mark; and was shaping the future. However, perhaps the most memorable use of white was in the final scene when the entire company departed in a frenzy of farewells and frantic waving. From one large cardboard box placed on the floor-cloth a large fleet of flat-pack foam-board buses suddenly appeared. Both performers and audience became part of a promenade finale that was visually energetic and entertaining. And, like all of SOPs work, the use of multi-disciplinary arts practices to stimulate creativity while challenging and examining clichéd views about disability was uncompromising and imaginative.

These recent projects have signalled the potential application of drawing and fine art practices in performance contexts with artists from a range of cultural backgrounds and multi-disciplinary skills. The use of black drawing media to create linear narratives on white paper, foam-board or even old lorry tarpaulins has allowed for a new and novel approach to physical theatre in Scotland and beyond.