Engineers of the Imagination

One Foot on the Ground, One Foot Moving An introduction to the work of lVelfure State Intemaionsl TONY COULT

'Welfare State International, founded in 1968, is one of the most consistently exciting theatre companies bom out of rhe cultuml and political ferment of Bdtain in the late '6ot. Now, in rI€ eighties, it has a€hieved intemational acclaim for its joyous blend of visual spectacle, popular theatre, and celebration. Its resources remain what they have been almost from the beginning - sculpture (using, as well as more conventional materials, elements such as ice or fire), puppetry, landscape, food,fircworks, music, technology, dance, performance and weather. These resources and skills, shared by

a

large and growing band

of freelance artists root€d on a small core of permanent

company

members, have grown over the years in a conrext of both social and aesthetic experiment. This long-term process of rcseat€h-and-pracrice seeks to re-$tablish, away ftom the conventional building-based middlebrcw/middle-class theatre, the popular theatr€ tnditions of the working class, such as Carnival, the Feast of Fools) the fairground, the mummers' plays, that vein of subversion-as-ente ainment that runs (hrough so much of folk theatre and song. Such a proiect is, ofcourse, fraught with contradictions, and mises the spectres of fake-primitivism and rootless, academic rcvivalism. lgelfarc State tackle these problems head-on by creating new myths, new hybrid styles, and new celebrations on the matrix of the old, nther than simply reviving the old for irs quaint or arcane qualities.

The essence of ! elfare State's programme is stated by its founder, John Foxi 'Cullen(ly we live in a matedalistic society; religious beliefs are declining and there is no sEucture of myth. We try to find archerypes that are universally sharcd, and present them in an idiom accessible ro a broad audience.' This seich for myth and its enactment, could become Clite and intrcverted, and unrelated to the complex, messy culture tha! welivein. Welfare State,however,worksfromth€assumptionthatmyth and archetype are functional operations of human consciousness. It is not a word that would appeal lo many ofthe compeny perhaps, but their use of myth is rutional - not 'explainable' or 'reducible to a mechanical

ONE FOOT ON THE GROUND, ONE FOOT

MOVING

3

logic', but based in the reasonable needs of human beings to sharc and celebrate their humanity. The Greeks used myths to express rruths about being human, and told stories about fallible deiries who fought battles as winners and losers, whomadelove, and made mistakes. In doing so, th€y enacted on the public stage and in the inner mind the conflicls berween

Good and Evil, colectiv€ and individual, male and female, ruler and ruled, that were the daily matedal of everyday life.

Other societies have other myths, but common ro most developed societies has been a batde for ownership ofmyths. Rulers have claimed theh myths as iustification for thei own rulingJ and the ruled in iheir tum, have clung to their interpretation ofthe myths as a defence against the rulen' opprcssions. So it is that one mythological structure, such as Christianreligion, can become a battleground of opposing inteDreration.

Divine Righl of Kings, the State's system of law, the identiication of State and Church, have all been sanctioned for Rulers, just as an opposing set ofimpulses such as the democEtic ideal ('all men are equal in the sighl of God') and tle moral superiority of the poor ('it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man ro enret into the kingdom of God') can be claimed by the ruled as sources of strength,

\x/elfare State over aLmost

a

decade.

arrre: Requiem for Kirk8.re Market, Bradford 1973.

l.l,',:

Ulverston Csmival. Cumbria. rs8o.

both persoml and political. Working from an arrisric baseJ in a mythological near-vacuum, Velfare Stare are setting about the reclaiming of myth and its theatrical enacrmenr for the whole commudty. In a world where the shared culture of human beings is incrcasingly thrcatened by a largely imposed electronic culture, myths and archetype have to be discovercd and re-made, not simply revived.

To do this, li/elfare State rummage eclecrically through many differenr cultures (albeit wilh respect for them), in order to find new expressions of common archetypes. ft is, indeed, policy 10 invite foreign artists as often as possible to broaden the pool of mythological reference.

Most of the theatrc forms refe{ed to so far have been public

performances. Of equal wbighr in the company's policy is the work of making domesti€ ceremony - the Namings of children, \f'eddings and Betrcthals, and (yet to be fully researched) Funerals. These moments of

personal and social signmcance are usually marked by formalised celebmtion (or mourning) based on the prcvailing cufture. For most of us in Britain, that means the Church, although for most of us, rhe Church means little. To mark moments of ceremony in ways thal would honour their importance, Welfarc State began, in 1969, to devise for particular groups of people, new ceremonies, using rhe talents, personalities, images and ideas of the people for whom the ceremonies were made, These evmts have ritual elements, although they are not 'ritualistic' in

the sense that some theatre people understand th€m, thar is they are not dbout the inducing of trancelike states in which reflection, reason and awareness are suppressed or abandoned. On ihe contrary, these qualities are heightened. As Lois Lambert r€ports in Chapter V on the naming of

ONE FOOT ON T}IE GROUND, ONE FOOT

MOVING

5

h€rown childi 'Wehad confirmed and €elebrated our shared humanity, making a public celebration of our love, our hopes for our children.

'Ihere had be€n nothing strange or mystical about the day. We had not been seeking for a powerful magic in which to lose ounelves.'

If most welfare State work swings b€tw€en public performance and privaie cer€mony, with the re-crcation of myth as its pivot, there is a third,lesser-known, but in its own low-key way, equally important area of work. This could be described as Landscape Gardening, and is cmbodied most remarkably inawood in the Cumbria hills, where Boris und Maggie Howarth have created a 'Garden of Contemplation' called Stillpoint. They have taken what is, in any case, a beautiful and intriguing site, and made a gentle enhancement of its every aspect. By adding small sculptural effects, most in the woodi stone and greenery (har make up tlle wood itself, they have pointed up, with respect, humour and rhe occasional surprise, the Datural charactedsrics of the site. The additions and modifrcadons to the site n€ver dominate, but sharyen the focus and quicken the appelite for what is already there.

'Stillpoint' at first glance seems far away from the aggressive, anarchic cnergies of fte early Welfare State strcet theatre style.It may even seem ro have little in common with an exploding, neon sigr-bedecked Tower ofBabel. arcund which, one November 51h, Bncknell's bikers circled like chariot-racers loose in a Fritz Lang 6lm. Yet both the yearlong '€venC in Cumbriaofthe changing wood, and the clima-r ofseveral weeks

'Welfare Stale work in Bracknell's 'Scarccrow Zoo', are characteristic work. They are animated by a need to express in human tems, the

myfiical and th€ natural for a societywhich

is becoming de-narured and de-humanised. welfare State's work has always been the cr€ation of a collective of artists under the leadership (sometimes acknowl€dged, sometimes not) of its founder John Fox and its associate director Boris Howarth. Fox, as a librarian and lectur at Bradford College of Art, and later, in r 97 r, as Senior Lecturer in the Fine Art department of Leeds Polytechnic, was able to draw on a pool of students and staff to collaborate on one-off events. These included 'St. Valentin€'s Firestorm' (1968) in which a public dance was hterupted by a re-creation of the Dresden bombing (teducing the audience to a kind of hysteria in a way I wouldnl do now becauseit was a formofaesthedc fascism'), and'The Tide is O.K. for the 3oth', commissioned in 1968 by the B€aford Centre in Devon, ard cnacted on a nearby beach with Army DUKWS and fireworks. Like so much else rhat emeryed from that Hydra-headed phenomenon, the

so,called 'Alternative' culture, these events owed most to the

A!

image in srone

dd

wood from rhe carden of ConremplationJ Srr/lrDnr,

in Cumb.ir

fte

Afi

Schools

Performance Art, Happ€nings and multimedia events then active abroad, particularly in Amedca. 1968 also saw rhe take-over by students and staff of Homsey Art Collese, an event which slmbolised the irruption into political Me of

which had act€d as a ftrnnel into Britain for

6

ENGINEERSOFTHEIMAGINATION

Art

School energies. The breaking down of bariers between prcviously discrete art-forms was echo€d in rhe active seeking by students of involvement in social and political activity.

For many theatre groups looking ro integrate arr wirh ordinary life, street theatre performance offercd a natural form in which to work. At the other end of the spectrum were the larger-scale, one'off events in which iazz composer Mike V/estbrook collaborated as musical direcror.

These were genuine multi"media events, involving image-makers, jazz and rock musicians, writers, sound and light technicians, and circus

artists such as 6re-eaters, sword-swa.llowers and wirc-walkers.

Both the larye-scale work and the stree! thearre, and all the one-off events in betweenr were part of a ferment of energy and expeiment that exploded from lhe late sixties. Much of that ferment drew its strength from a sense of being 'avanr'garde', of pushing backmusical, visual and theatdcal bariers that were previously rigid ard otderly. Yer, paradoxically the essence of Welfare State's proiect was also conservative, in that it was dedicated to the revitalising of traditional popular theatre forms. Although they operated within rhe then currenr utopian avant-gardism, they were also trying to uphold a tradition of popular entertainment against much of the mind-blown, 6litist experimenrarion of the time. Such a conrradicrion was bound to cause problems, and for John Fox, they were focused on a tour of 'The Sweet Misery of Life Show' in r 97 r : 'It was basically a satirical critique, an allegory of Britain, about a variety show that broke up and €nded with a mock crucifixion and a talent competition. The main aim of that show was to get as many boos as possible. I think the climax came for me when we did ir somewhere in South London, and we got all th€ trendies coming out to see how well we pe orm€d) not lisr€D to what we were saying. It became very much fringe people performing to fringe people. It wasn't achieving anything ar all. I thinl I shouted at people and swore ar them. Actually we blew it because Oscar Lewinstein, from the Royal Court, was in to see ifhe wanted to commission us, and we iust stopped peforming. So the following week, in the sam€ venue, we srarted the first of the Lancelot Quail stories. V/e already had that kind of show in rhe bag, butit seemed like overnighl we just iumped from one show ro rhe orher. It became a positivething, it wasnlaggressive, itwas about maldng the audience feel in some way better. And since then, the work's pursued a much more poetic pattern.'

The appearance of Lancelot Quail in the company's lists marked a defrnile development in the work. Embodied only by one peformer,

Jamie Proud, a pig-farmer turned performer and teacher, this working-class hero, whose full name finally grew to Lancelot Icarus Handyman Barrabas Quail, was an Everyman figure for the audience to identify with as well as laugh at. He became a rough-h€wn comic cenrre around whi€h extraordinary demons and spirits flew, tomenting him,

Lancelot Icarus Haqdyman Barrabas Quail, as seen inBumley, in r97?

3

ONE FOOT ON THE GROUND. ONE FOOTMOVING

ENCINEERS OF THE IMAOINATION

insptuing him, and finally being d€feated by his knotty human spirit. The 1972 tour 'The Travels of Lancelot Quail', in which the travels were enacted along a rcute from Glaslonbury to Lands End using a circus tent toworkin, has become almost an icon ofits theatrical time, especiallyin Roger Perry's photographs. The tour ctrlminated in the disappearance off the Cornish coast of the entire company in a submarine, H.M.S. Andrew, a bizare instance of the milihry-artistic complex at work!

Lancaster. From r97o, both were working on Welfare Starc events.

Howarth has proved an effective foil to Fox over fie yearsr bringing to the latler's quixotic creatrve personality a more measurcd, classical sensibility. In panicular he and Maggie Howarth had developed at New Planet Ciry a rradition of slreet thealre based on percussion bands playing Laiin and Aftican rhythms. Howarth was also knowledgeable about i"u"onat ce."*onials, and was regularly €reating sp€cial events dround November 5th bonfires, for example. Together, th€y had begun ro work withvoungpeople in Lancasrer. manyofwhom wereconsidered 'dil6cult or :delinquent'. lvith their ioint energies. lhe Fo\es and rhe Howarths had, by the early '7o'sJ the essmtial elemenls which, refined over the years by a wide variety of talented associates, still form the basis of their work: a developed sculptural sense, a desire to levitalis€ populat theatre traditions, a commitmeDt to drawing in lo€al energies and leaving

behind

a

withdrawal,

residue a set

of skills aDd confidence after the company's

of musical techniques suited to the colour and energy

of

rheir streer performance) and above all an ability to use eclectically srvles. influences and lechniques from almost any source. vhile rhe Burnley retidency gave \welfare Slate lhe opportuniry Lo consolidate and develop its work, itwasn't a completely unalloyed time Thev had a)sumed the role of'Civic Magicians . spending about a fiird ol lhe verr in Burnley providing large-scale rheatrical evenl" such as $e 6rsr'Parliament in Flamei November sth bonfire. a" well as smaller sculotural orece: like Christmas cribs. The resl of tle year was spent on rour: in B;imin, and increasingly in Europe. There were. however. oroblemr aboul relalions with tle community. One problem was pa(ly

savs Fox, il s a repressed working-class town.

I atso think we looked like a bunch of fieaks who liv€d on a rubbish tip.' (The Council had rented them a disused quanv for the burgeoning collection of Eailers, lorries, land_lovers and

burnlev itself. I think,

The company heads to its rendezvorls with H. M. Submari,ne Andttu ia t972.

By 1972, Mid-Pennine Arts Association, in an act of

exceptional imagination, had invited \0elfare State to take up r€sidence in Buffiley as theatre fellow of the Association, and a new vein of work was opened up.

This was based on skill-teaching, and rcsearch into the arts and the community. As well as consciously regenerating the popular theatre tradition, Fox had always wanted to work on the assumption that the company should teach people t}le skills ne€essary 1o make their own celebrations, skills fast disappearing in a mechanised and de-skilled society. In this he was helped by the man later to become Welfare State's co-director, Bods Howanh. Howarth had been involved in folk music, and in the pioneer conrmunity theatre work of John Arden and Maryarctta D'Arcy, as well as staghg conce s of music by John Cage ('So arty', remembers Fox, that I thrcatened ro drive though the place with a dumper truck.') By the late Sixties, Howarth and his wife Maggie

were running New Planet City, a community afis workshop in

more s; than many,

caravans tharnow made up the Welfare State circus. ) 'People tlought we were hippies and our image and fie kind ofwork we did was sometimes

di;atinq. r,J0e wore heavy make-up. we did very 'progressive' oer'iormance'. we didr'r actuallygo abou( it irl dre right wav. Giventhe continuing amount ot excidng work ploduced by the company year by vear. ircludine: Burnlev'Parliament in Flames'that allracted close lo ien thou"and ioecraron, rhar 'elf-criticism may be undulv harsh. bu( i( verv

hiahlishts an;rher ev€nt lha( wa:

of cruciai importalce for

the

colmpa-nyh structure. ln spite of a somewhat hrppy-ish claim in an eally manifesio that 'IJi/e fuse fin€ art, theatre and life-stvle', the life-style, or more Drooerlv the work-st\le, was in facr lI) uneasy coalilion between rhe idiair'of.ollecriviry and the pracdce of a director company model.

Fox had been the teaiher of many of the early company members, and

while he saw the t€acher/student lelationship being transformed into director/company, his students-turned-associates didn1. They wanted

IO

ENCINEERS OFTHE IMAGINA'|ION

ONE FOOT ON THE GROUND. ONB FOOT MOV1NG

ll

collective working on the company's products to be rcflecred in collective

control of the company's prccesses. There were also fundamenral disagreements from some members about fte point ot trymg to work rn the community as teachers. The consequent clash of principles and personalities resultedhthe greater part of Welfare State leaving h 1976 to form LO.U. (Independent Outlaw University) which has gone on to become one of the finest performance art companies in fte country.

From that split, Velfare State took the basic company structure that now obtains, of a two-man directorate, two full-time administrato$ and a technical dircctor. All other workers arc freelan€e associates who join the company for specific projects, often being invited back time after time. kr the late Autumn of 1977, the company att€mpted a kind of s]'nrhesis of all the accumulated research and experience of the previous nine years, in'The Loves, Lives and Murders of Lancelot Barabas Quail'.

On Fulledge Recreation Ground in Burnley, in a complex of tents arcund what looked lil(e a medieval jousting space, the audience wandered amongst sid€shows and giant puppets befote entering a 'cinema' to see a filjn about Quail and his bizarre early life. Aftet rhe film, there was opportunity to wander again, to buy tea and hot potatoes, to

investigare rhe strange tableaux representing Quail's inner mind, to listen to theband's music, oriust to keep warm by the glowing braziers.

Finally the audience sat on either side of fie open space for the play of 'Ballabas'. Giant pupp€t figures, and acting p€rformances to match, called to the performance space an array of marvellous images to terrodse and torment Quail. As the pedormanc€ drew to a close, two gross cooks distributed spicy, steaming-hot bread to the audience. 'Barrabas' was a summation of so many of the elements gathered under the Welfare State banner in pr€€eding yean. Its basic story-shucture was bone-simple, a Birth, Death and Resurrcction sequence happening to an Every-man figure. Its imagery was spectacular and beautiful precisely because its

style was rich, quirky and obviously handmade. Its music

was

strongly-flavoured, and acoustic. Its references ranged from Buddhist metaphysics to TV soap opera. Most significandy for the company's development perhaps, the audience were invited in, literally, by an M. C. character, and fguratively in the atr€ntion paid to their comfort and pleasure in all aspects ofthe perfomance (given, ofcourse, rhat it was late October and mostly open lo the skyl) 'Vith the company's deparfirre from Burnley in 1978, a new phase began. John and Sue Fox, wirh their children, went on a sabbatical visir

to Austmlia and Bali, and Boris Howarth took over as direcrot of research. During this period, more local, intimate slyl€s of work wete developed. Events for seasonal occasions, such as Harvest and Chdstmas, were created small communiries with the active partrcipation of local people, and the idea of the 'Feast' was elabomred.

In this traditional form, food and drinl arc specially made for one plac€

in

The skeleton beadng Lancelot Quail is

at

open--Ba ttubas, Bunley,

197,1 .

and event, as at Digswell House, \felwyn Garden City in 1979 in 'When The Pie lcas Opened'. Naming ceremonies, and the annual November 5th'Parliament in Flames'became regular parts of the company's work, and the basis was laid for one ofthe most successfi and popular Welfare Slate crcations, the Bam Dance. The working principle by now was to seek rcsidencies in local communiti€s or arts centres sympathetic to their

open-door (and usually open"air) policy. Such residen€ies were duly undertaken in every$ing from the Cleveland village of Thorpe Thewles to the islands off Toronto Harbour in Canada. By r98r, the final significant piece of the present jigsaw was the use of a reconnaissance team, lodged on site for weeks, or even months, before the main company's arrival. The respect for a community's life - inner and outer pays off in two ways. It allows local people to adjust to an input which,

however good, is these days out-of-the-ordinary and potentially disrurbing, and it allows images from the landscape and from the stories and experience of local people to filter back to the main arch.itects of the proi€€t, who will be planning the basic structure of imagery and story. lfelfare Statet work is never perfect or finished or without contradiction, which is to say that it is still vital, alive and in touch with the culture rhat feeds it. As the state's economic base crumbles, andas a genteel and philistine fascism threatens its people, ir may seem

12

BNGINEERSOFTHEIMAGINATION

incongruous to celeblate, and downdght irresponsible to some to dance and create spectacular events, or quiet gardens of contemplation, The problem is nor evaded by the company. As Fox says in one interview: 'ICs certainly the case in a lot of South American countries. where Carnival i5 used as a way ofgiving people a day of freedom so rhat rhey calr be repressed the rest ofthe year. [r's also litenlly used as a way of bumping people off . . . during the excesses of Carnival rherc are well-reported events where the police go rcund in plain clothes killing people. There will always be rhis argument. Basically you are saying ,Is this a time for art?'

If the answer for 'Welfare State is yes, there remains the thorny pmblem that rhe funcrion ofthe sharcd beliefs and myrhs on which rhey build their work has genemlly been to reinforce the dominant politics and culture. Public rirual is usually rhoughr of as essenrially s conservative) powet-reinforcing activity, such as the crowning of a monarch or a military funeral. In tribal societies, ir is arguable thar 'official' riruals gave an organic coherence to living thar was $senrial ro survival. In modefl technocratic states, at war wirhin themselves socially and morally, communal images and myths are highty likely to be empty relics of pa$ organic culture, or stare propaganda designed ro subdue popular expression and acrion. The filling of that vacuum in human social needs is therefore lefr to artisrs, the ,unacknowledged legislaton', and whether they fill that vacuum with more empty a or with something rooted in society\ real needs ofren dep€nds on rheir awareness of the political nature ofart. By crearing its new myrhs and

rituaisfoilimiredspanssndspecifi c spaces, rathe!rhanmakingproducts for all time or posterity, Velfare State commit themselves to working in a real world. Thei work raises back into their proper places in the public culture, areas of exp€dence that are under direcr rhrear fiom the om€ial

culture- creativity, sensuality

and communality. The company cannot, of itself, change society, nor could a hundred Velfare States, but ir can help to infom the inevitable large changes in society with kinds of

feeling often neglected by conventional political art.

One of the (instincrive) ways rhat Velfare Srate avoid supporting reaction and the status quo is to work arcund thecoreconcepr ofChange.

The very recurrence ofthe alchetypal Birth-Death-Rebirrh cvcle in the work implie: the concepts ot Change and Transformat ion.' The idea permeates manylevels, ftom the commissioning stagerotheinnet life of individual images, For example, ice and fire, both elem€nrs in the company's armoury are self-evid€nt embodiers of changei the effect of giant puppets in the srreer forces an immediately pleasurable change of perception in spe€taton. IDdividual arts are continually changed and transformed. In music, for instance, you can catch the flavour of a iazzband or folkband, which have a Fifties resonance, while drawing on popular music from the start of the century or €arlier. It isn,t long before

ONE FOOT ON THE GROUND, ONE FOOA

MOVING

13

- by a South Amedcan bayonne rhythm, by Celtic South Afiican Hi-Life textures, by reggae or by synthesiser. The new sounds do not replace the old ones, but colour rhem and move them on into new hybrid sryles. Predictably, visual images are also subiect to the processes oftransformation, A black crcw becomes a bomber, rhen a cross, A character is part Mad Angel, part B-movie lest pilot, part Ariel and palt clown. Tragedy and farce dance these are transfomed

pipes, ska

or

together, things die and new things are born. Even out of Death images, new images grow. The companyt work pattem, too, embodies the idea

Change, with its shifti-ng personnel show-to-show, working in different venues, effecting transformarions and encouraging them to occur after departure. There is little that is predictable in the work, for the ov€mll vision mapped out by the two dircctors is subject to

of

transformations wrought upon it by the colleclive ofartists employed for each prciectj and once start€d, the making process olr site lends to have a

life of its owrl. Thus, while Change in the work process might be unpredictable, it is not in fact random or arbitrary but based on past experience and shaped to sstisfy present needs.

The futurer we must accept, is fraught foi both the theatre and society in g€neml. Britain, to say nothing of the wider world, is turbulent with the crumbling ofold structures, and the struggles ofnew ones to come into being. To describe yourselves) as Welfare State do, as 'Pathological Oprimists' might seem like empty idealism, were it not for the vein of sharp iro[y that runs thrcugh so much of the work, and coloun that slogan -'You have to be mad io be an optimistl'There is also,I suspect, an a€t of will implied in it, echoing on€ of Brecht's favourite phrases 'Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the will!' Also emblazoned on the side of the company's Leyland truck is 'Engineers of the

Imaginadon', a label that suc€inctly reflects the combinarion of rechnology, craft and a that the company deals in. It is the Imagination, above aI, that powers all the processes of rational and areative action that make up social living, and the transforming power of the imagination that makes change possible, \fithout it, there can be no learning and no momlity. !0elfare State recognise that the creative irnagination is the enemy of the fragmenting and the dehumanised. In modern sociely, a great deal of effori goes inLo keeping the lid on creative energy. using everything from outright oppression to the subtler ideological machineries of the education and communications svstems. That is why it is vital to mount, alongside a theatre of analysis and rationality, what one €ompany associaie calls 'The Imagination Recovery Service'J not as a diversion from, or substitute for, the active changrng ofthe wodd, but as a vital partner and precondition of Change.

In India, there is a word,'paramparar) whose rough transladon is tradition'. It means literally 'one foot on the ground, one foot moving',

and

ir

suggests something

of the spirit of Welfare Statet work. The

ONE FOOT ON THE GROUND, ONE FOOT

MOVINO

T5

image descdbes a tension between opposites, between the still and the moving, between the fixed past and the changeable future. ft makes of tradition, not a static millstoDe around the neck, but a dynamic process which can be crcated as well as observed. Above all, it is an image of pleasure, for 'one foot on the ground, one foot moving' is an image of

Dancing.

The inuse ofDabcine-Ulvercron Carnnal I98o.