Stage of discovery

AT Arches Live, a theatre show can mean everything from having your feet washed to wandering around the venue looking for lost property. Steve Cramer previews three of the most talked-about shows, while Andrew Eaton lists some other festival highlights

'This is undeniably a risk, but one worth taking'

FOOT WASHING FOR THE SOLE

THERE'S a likeable kind of frailness to Adrian Howells. For some years now, his intimate style of performance has endeared itself to Scottish audiences. Usually working with small groups, he sometimes employs biographical confession in his work, and encourages audiences to share intimacies of their own. His 2007 Edinburgh Fringe show saw him busily dragging himself up for a performance, while asking people about their own backgrounds and experiences.

This show takes a further step towards breaking down the barriers between performer and audience. In it, Howells talks about the significance of feet to our spiritual and physical well-being, while, in a one-to-one encounter, washing, massaging, anointing and finally kissing people's feet. These gestures have a particular significance across more than one culture, with religious connotations extending from Christian to Muslim worship, but there's far more to feet than that, Howells tells me. "As Jesus was washing the feet of his disciples he said, 'What I do for you now, go out and do for others,' and you would suspect that this was because he wanted them to do something kind and loving for others, as a kind of gift. But having done this piece over 50 times now, I realise that it's also a gift for ourselves. He gave this instruction to facilitate the foot washer connecting deeply with him or herself, and others."

The action at the centre of the piece is plainly about humility, and Howells thinks we all need more of this. "We are all too egocentric and arrogant. We exploit and manipulate other people and we think we know everything; how to rule the world and run the planet."

As for the particular closeness of his performance style, Howells doesn't feel any more exposed as a performer than other actors, indeed less so. "Personally, I think acting Shakespeare is far scarier. All those far-fetched stories, ridiculous plot twists and arcane phrases to come to terms with. I would be terrified of trying to remember lines, 'acting' a character under the pressure to get it right for an amorphous bunch of self-selected experts. My performance style is very relaxed, and the structure of my pieces very flexible. Making myself vulnerable and open is the best way I know of trying to forge an intimate exchange with an audience. This is undeniably a risk, but one worth taking, and it never really feels risky to me when I do it."

• Foot Washing For The Sole, tonight until 20 September, noon until 10pm (contact box office for times)

'Escape is important but it's not escapism'

LITTLE VIKINGS ARE NEVER LOST

FEW who saw it would forget Jenna Watt's final piece for the contemporary performance course at Queen Margaret University College. She is a very petite young woman, and made her diminutive physique the centre of a moving performance.

In the two years since then, Watt has been developing as an artist through a series of different roles in the theatre. Her professional debut, Bench, was well received in the live art community, so there's plenty of anticipation attached to this, her follow-up, and biggest show to date.

Developed with designer Katy Wilson, it has a couple of telling words in its title. Of Little Vikings are Never Lost, Watt says: "Being little is a very important part of my performance persona, and I like to acknowledge that. The Viking part is about Norway, where I went in 2007. I'm from the Highlands and have a particular relationship with landscape. I also have a mysterious Nordic name in my family, and have since assumed that I was a Viking!"

"It's a story about a girl who tries to run away and hide from the grief she feels after her father's death," she continues. "She ends up creating a whole new surreal landscape to live in, surrounded by objects that have lost their original meaning. Anonymous letters begin to arrive containing seemingly abstract text. Some are comforting and others tormenting, but all remind her of a journey."

Found objects are very much part of Watt's theatrical modus operandi, and here, the idea of incorporating installation seemed appropriate to a project that includes surrealism, and which uses familiar objects in an unfamiliar fashion. "An installation seemed the right way to approach the abstract world the character lives in," she says. "Katy and I have been working on the project for over a year, and because objects play a significant part, it's been important to have Katy involved through the whole project."

But while escape is important to the piece, Watt is keen to emphasise that it is not, for that reason, escapism. "I think, generally, it's very important to acknowledge our need to escape into ourselves. However, it's the places we go when we need to escape that interest me in particular."

• Little Vikings Are Never Lost, tonight until 20 September, 7:10pm

'A nation's legacy can never be totally buried'

CRIA

THERE's a paradox to people who tell you they live "in the moment". We all, of course, like to feel an element of spontaneity in our lives, but our every experience is, in fact, informed, regulated and kerbed by history, both personal and political. Attempts to rediscover some prelapsarian paradise in Pol Pot's Cambodia, where at the beginning of the new regime "Year Zero" was declared, only led to even greater bloodshed and catastrophe than the troubled era that preceded his reign.

But the business of how societies and people are remade in new eras is very much at the centre of Carlos Saura's film Cria Cuervos. It appeared shortly after Franco's death, as Spain moved into a new and uncertain future. Megan Barker's adaptation of the movie does not attempt to simply re-stage it; this would be far too massive a task. "From the start, we knew we didn't want to recreate the film," explains director Neil Doherty, "so instead, Megan, I and our four actors started a process concentrating on themes and images associated with the original film and devising a script through improvisation."

The result is a story about children reinventing a society, once ruled by a brutal dictator, through their own imaginations. "Corruption is totally endemic. It can never be totally erased, and, willingly or not, the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons – or in this case daughters," Doherty says. "The idea of the past never really being the past and coming back to haunt you is relevant to any society. A nation's legacy, be it Britain, Bosnia or Spain can never be totally buried, it will always be unearthed."

The dark poetic visions of Barker, combined with Doherty's talents as one of our most distinguished young directors, look like producing an effect that combines the relativism of a child's vision with definite ideological themes. "The world of Cria is mainly viewed through the eyes of the child Ana," he explains. "She interprets things for us, so lines are blurred and there is no universal truth, but I hope the political aspect is not lost in the finished piece. I hope people don't just view it as a good story in the vein of Pan's Labyrinth, which incidentally was inspired by Cria Cuervos. It should read as overtly political."

• Cria, tonight until 20 September, 7:15pm

FIVE other things you can see at this year's Arches Live

1 A 20-MINUTE SHOW ABOUT GETTING LOST

Lost Property is a promenade performance about lost property and lost people, that takes place all around the venue. (tonight until 20 September, various times)

2 A SHOW ABOUT "VIOLENCE, LONELINESS, REPETITION AND DEBAUCHERY"

ALL these themes are explored in Violent Night, about life in a modern British city (tonight until 20 September, 9:30pm)

3 A WOMAN FALLING IN LOVE WITH A CHAIR

ARTISTS Shelly Nadashi and Jim Colquhoun team up for Arrow in the Eye, a one-off performance tonight at 10pm about the passivity – or otherwise – of objects.

4 A LECTURE GONE WRONG

THIS being Murray Wason's description of his solo show The Last Drop (23-24 September, 7pm), "a performance filled with speeches and toasts and rage".

5 A SNEAK PEEK AT NEXT YEAR'S ARCHES LIVE

As part of the festival, the venue's regular Scratch night is making a return, with ten minute samples of various performers' works in progress. Join Kevin Wratten, Kieran Lynn, Parminder Kaur, Alan Bissett and more, and have a drink with them afterwards.

• Arches Live runs from today until 27 September. You can see every show in the festival for £26 (£22 concessions). Call the box office on 0141-565 1000