CityLife

In with the new for Queer Up North

Taylor Mac is at the Library

"THIS year Queer Up North really gets back to being a festival of interesting exciting new performance,” enthuses Jonathan Best, the festival’s artistic director.

“We really wanted to pull out all the stops this year and show what we’re made of.

"So every single thing is new work. We’ve got nine or 10 brand new pieces of theatre performance, including three of our own commissions as well as world and British premieres.

"We’ve also got comedy, music and cabaret in the Spiegeltent, as well as debates and social events adding to the texture of the festival.

"But at its heart is theatre that’s going to be seen in Manchester before anywhere else.

“Having so much new stuff is risky, of course, but it’s also so much more exciting than seeing a load of stuff that’s been going around the country for months.

"New stuff is important for a festival because that’s the time when, if you like, normal arts service is suspended for something extraordinary, for something that somehow crams lots of excitement and risk and adventure into a finite period of time.

"It’s much more exciting, as a member of the audience, to be offered the show and be told ‘we’re still making it, so come and find out what it is when we do!’It’s exciting to be a part of that and that’s part of what people buy into when they come to Queer Up North.” 

As John points out, seeing new work is part of the adventure of enjoying live art in a city that prides itself on being an international one, although he adds that “of course, the arts ecology of a city means that new work needs to co-exist alongside the variety of everything else that’s going on.

"When we go into the Library Theatre next week, for example, it’s our job in the Library Theatre programme to disrupt what the Library Theatre usually is, to be what Queer Up North is for a week or so and let the Library Theatre be completely changed by that!

Mix and mingle

"That’s the relationship of a festival to an established venue. You get some of our audience and some of the established Library Theatre audience meeting in this space and starting to mix and mingle. That’s the fun of it.”

A lot of the QUN work is, he admits, "hard to define. That’s because I’m always on the look-out for performers who have their own unique way of doing things. I like work that, if you have to put it in a box, you have to put it in more than one!

“That’s true of all three of the Queer Up North commissions – Ursula Martinez at the Library Theatre, Chris Goode at Contact and Starving Artists at the Royal Exchange – although what they have in common is that they’re all extraordinary story-tellers.

Magic trick

"Ursula Martinez, for example, who has a relatively famous magic trick (if you don’t already know, don’t ask!), also makes really unusual pieces of theatre in the broadest sense, mixing stand-up comedy, performance, film and video, documentary, audience participation…

"It’s all sort of wrapped up together, so you can’t say it’s this or this, it’s everything. She’s a brilliant performer and entertainer.

"She’s out to provoke pleasure in the audience, but she also loves to confuse and confound you!

“You get a similar quality from Taylor Mac, who I’m on something of a mission to bring to everyone’s attention. It took the New York theatre world over a decade to wake up to how good Taylor Mac is, to acknowledge in, for instance, the New York Times, and The Village Voice that he’s one of New York’s greatest theatre-makers.

"He’s a drag queen too, he’s true to his roots. He says ‘I don’t do performance art, that’s just a posh word for drag!’

"The time you spend with Taylor Mac is not like any other artist or performer. He is charming, vulnerable, funny, angry and exciting. He’s a great entertainer and a hugely intelligent writer – it’s great theatre by any standards.”

Queer Up North runs from Tuesday, May 12 until Bank Holiday Monday, May 25. Taylor Mac’s The Young Ladies Of... is at the Library Theatre from Tuesday until Saturday, May 16. Ursula Martinez’ My Story, Your E-mails is at the Library Theatre from Wednesday until May 16. For information or to book tickets call 0870 066 6845.