‘COME this way,” invites Ian Smith, with a sweep of his hand and a persuasive smile, every inch the ringmaster in the circus of the absurd. “But you must wear a funnel on your head. Nobody gets into this work without a funnel on their head. It’s a health and safety development to protect from medieval sensibility.”
Thus you will enter Peeping at Bosch, the latest project by Smith’s company Mischief La-Bas, on a carousel with a funnel on your head, riding on the back of a wooden pig. And that’s just the beginning of the madness.
But however bizarre, spectacular or perverse the world is that Smith has created, it’s unlikely to outstrip its inspiration, Hieronymous Bosch’s strange, phantasmagorical 16th-century triptych, The Garden of Unearthly Delights.
A dog-eared poster version hangs on the wall of the room Mischief is using a rehearsal space and workshop, where a large circle of shimmery fabric is being shaped into the surface of a pool, and choreographer Lindsay John is working out movement for Adam and Eve.
This is the poster that Smith unrolled, first for Tramway’s Steve Slater, later for Vicky Featherstone and Neil Murray of the National Theatre of Scotland. “All I did at first was just unfurl the painting for people and tell them I wanted to do something with the imagery,” he said. “And we became mutually excited about it. When I look at the picture, it is already a fantastic gig.”
Indeed, the first thing you will see on entering Tramway 1 is a large-scale version of the painting being “depopulated and repopulated” by animator Ronnie Heeps, with its frolicking naked figures, torture machines, fantastical scenery and strange creatures. Smith wants to point his audiences towards the master. “I absolutely do want people to enjoy the work of Bosch,” says Smith. “It’s one of the most imaginative masterpieces ever painted, and it has influenced all sorts of artists, from Salvador Dali to the Chapman Brothers.”
Heeps is one of around 20 artists and performers whom Smith has invited to join the Mischief “gang” to create a living reincarnation of the painting, an interactive tableau vivant through which visitors can travel at leisure. Smith says: “There’s no beginning, middle and end, it’s as much like a visual art exhibition as a piece of theatre. I would really encourage people to come with contemplation in mind, as you would stand in front of a painting. We will provide big comfortable cushions to enable you to do that – though hell is slightly more uncomfortable.”
Even Tramway isn’t big enough to contain Smith’s ambition. This project, made in partnership with Tramway and the National Theatre of Scotland, is a taster for a much bigger show he is calling Bisch Basch Bosch, a large-scale outdoor realisation of the painting as a “perverted theme park”. He has been in talks across Europe, from Bosch’s birthplace in the Netherlands, to Madrid, where the painting currently resides, in a quest for international partners.
It would be the biggest-ever project for Glasgow-based Mischief La-Bas, best known for “walkabout” performances that combine theatre and live art. “We crashed a rocket into the middle of Glasgow for the millennium, so nothing is sacrosanct,” Smith smiles.
Their work, whether for festivals or corporate events, is rarely without a sense of irreverence. The company manages to apply itself to the task in hand with a diligence verging on perfectionism, while at the same time not taking themselves too seriously. Smith is the kind of person who can go into Crockets, Glasgow’s celebrated ironmongers, and, with a completely straight face, order 150 funnels. “They like me in there,” he grins.
Once the audience is be-funneled, they will be given “hop-on, hop-off” tickets – “like a tour bus” – for the carousel made by designer Ewan Hunter. This is fitted with wooden animals carved in Sri Lanka by master craftsman TH Manjula, whom Mischief have been supporting since the tsunami of 2004. “He took a bit longer to do the camel because he had to go into the forest and find a big enough tree trunk to accommodate the humps!”
The carousel can be used to travel between the three “realms” that mirror those in the painting: Eden, the Garden of Earthly Delights, and hell. In Eden, a tree created by Sri Lankan sculptor WM Prasantha, forms the backdrop to Adam and Eve’s “intense cyclical piece of Japanese-based movement”. “And people will whisper Genesis to you,” says Smith. “Not the band – the Bible! But it would be funny wouldn’t it? Maybe we could sneak in a bit of Phil Collins?”
Lighting designer Mike Lancaster is sitting on a chair contemplating the tree and the lighting sequence he has devised around it. “It’s a 20-minute cycle,” he explains. “There’s one bit I’m not sure about but it’s 15 minutes in and there’s nothing to do except wait for it. It may look like I’m sitting here doing nothing but I’m working away!”
The central “Garden of Earthly Delights” section is the one Smith believes is most overlooked in the painting. “Whenever you mention the name of Bosch, everybody feels familiar with the painting, but typically what they have seen are the hellish images. It’s as much about harmony and bliss as it is about pain. Hell is only a quarter of the painting. It’s the crazy Glastonbury glee that I want to reclaim.”
Certainly, the original contains plenty of frolicking, eating of fruit and some intriguing things being done with flowers that might be best not described in a family newspaper. It isn’t known whether Bosch was warning against such permissive behaviour or suggesting that it might the way of things had man not fallen from grace. “But it doesn’t look cautionary to me,” says Smith. “It looks seductive.”
He plans to “synthesise” it, using inflatable “pods” by sculptor Iain Kettles, whose impromptu sculptures sprung up around Glasgow during the recent GI festival, into which members of the audience will be invited for one-to-one encounters. “Peeping at Bosch implies intimacy and certain limitations of scale. We can’t possible recreate all of the work at this stage without using a whole park.”
Next stop on the carousel is hell, where Bosch painted musicians being tortured inside their own instruments, gluttons being consumed by a giant with the head of a bird, and drinkers slaking their thirst inside a floating pub. “And it does amuse me,” says Smith, indicating a clearly recognisable shape in the middle of the panel, “that right in the centre of hell is the bagpipes!”
His own version has machines created by sculptor Alex Riggs (who will also perform the role of Adam, opposite his wife Florencia) in which performers will be tortured by the audience. One is inside a bell which can be hit with hammers operated by foot pedals, another will have his bottom smacked with wads of money while reaching for toys which remain perpetually beyond him.
I wonder whether anyone will be mean enough to operate them? “Oh they will,” Smith says, with conviction. “They will. The performers are going to be put through a very rigorous endurance test. There’s no respite. Once this universe is open, it’s open.”
So come on down, what are you waiting for?
• Peeping at Bosch is at Tramway, Glasgow, tonight until 13 July, 8pm and 9pm.
www.tramway.orgTHE MAKING OF MISCHIEFMISCHIEF La-Bas was formed in 1992 by Ian Smith and his wife, Angie Dight, who settled in Glasgow after touring with anarchic circus Archaos. The company specialises in “walkabout” theatre, from costumed meet-and-greet for corporate events, up to large-scale live art productions.
Past projects range from providing cleaners for festivals dressed as Elvis, to Painful Creatures, an “unfairground” populated by gorgons, saints, checkpoints and shipwrecked galleons, and Montague Place, which involved the construction of a town square for each performance.
Smith says that Scotland “punches well above its weight” in experimental performance, thanks to the strength of its festivals: “We are far more exposed to this kind of work than we should be for a small, wet country. Also, people who work in the first field in Scotland are quite a formidable force. Let’s face it, if you can do open air work here, you can do it anywhere.”
The company’s guiding principle is to give each member of the audience a one-to-one experience. “However you react to us, that creates the work,” says Smith. “Until the audience interacts with us, the work doesn’t exist.
“What we will never do is strap someone into a seat in a darkened room and insist by decorum that they wait till the end, show their appreciation or not, and discuss the show in the bar afterwards. I’ve had some excruciating experiences in theatres – why not let people leave?”
The full article contains 1558 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
