LLOYD NEWSON, Director of DV8
DV8 Physical Theatre's work is about taking risks, aesthetically and physically, about breaking down the barriers between dance and theatre and, above all, communicating ideas and feelings clearly and unpretentiously. It is determined to be radical yet accessible, and to take its work to as wide an audience as possible. Quoted from their website.
Dance often seems to be an abused step-child of the Arts, the one’s seldom mentioned in the will. And radical-new-ideas-in-dance-form are even more ignored by dance-buffs who prefer 19th Century romantic ballets. So when something new and adventurous comes along, it’s an obligation to at least investigate and see them when possible.
For only two performances in Los Angeles, amid a West Coast tour, the London-based DV8 Physical Theatre (its title, a play on “deviate,” is indicative of their purpose) wowed its audiences as they apparently have done for the past nineteen months. Founder/director Lloyd Newson, 52, Australian by birth and a Londoner by design, has been in a same-gender Civil Partnership for fourteen years with a British bureaucrat who works with – and sets policy for – those with learning disorders. Which explains much about his works.
This “outsider” profile has led Newson to explore certain culture-clashes (men/women, gay/straight, old/young, able-bodied/disabled, Muslim/ Christian) in his dance/acting format. For most of his adult life, Newson has puzzled over the tortured ways various religions justify their intolerances towards sexuality of all kinds. “What they seem to miss is the larger picture about the issue [of] tolerance. Who is it that proscribes how people should live their lives? I took offence recently when a young woman told me that ‘God loves me as a homosexual.’ I asked her that if God told her to hate me, would that be okay? She didn’t understand the question.” On a recent episode of The Stephen Nolan talk-show in Northern Ireland, an adult woman decried gay-bashing at the same time she justified it as a religious position. “She condemned the man bashed for being gay. That is unacceptable!”
Newson, who refers to himself as “director/conceptualist,” formed his own company in1986, after a couple of decades as a dancer. His various programs have toured America several times over the years, which has given him some insight into American evangelical types. Just as he decry’s Muslim fundamentalists in the U.K., he laments American fundamentalist’s hatred of homosexuals. Trained as a psychologist and in social work, he has placed his sexualized politics into the body of his works.
From the beginning, Newson has rebelled against the current aesthetic of contemporary dance: too pretty, too beautiful, and too short on intellectual ideas. So, he created his dance/acting as an artistic method of exploring subject matters of importance. “I like using the body to explore these ideas – social issues and psychological politicking. I make connections.”
The most recent piece, “To Be Straight With You,” has toured Britain, Europe, and America since March of 2008, including at the National Theatre in London, where it was nominated for an Olivier Award and also for a London Critic’s Award, both for dance. He’s also won the French Critic’s Circle Awards for best dance. But “dance,” for him, doesn’t really describe what his shows are. “I describe it mainly as a Physical Movement piece. My performers are trained in both dance and acting, as the spoken words used in the show were taken from a couple of hundred interviews we conducted in London, both in arranged one-on-one interviews and in-the-street short interviews, over six months, Eventually, we winnowed it down to 85 voices.”
His arts-aesthetic is very present, letting his performers speak in the rhythms they dance in. It has proven to be very popular in the dance world, bringing new ideas of presentation to the fore. His recent shows for UCLA’s Live! Series was a sell-out in the less-than-ideal Royce Hall – too large and acoustically inadequate to fully understand the British accents used.
Newson’s upbringing, according to him, was a miserable childhood lived in a country that didn’t support fixing abandoned children. “I lived in thirty-two housing situations in my youth, which certainly sensitized me to the unfairness of intolerance.”
America first saw “To Be Straight…” last year when they toured the Eastern part of the U.S. in New Hampshire, New Jersey and North Carolina. “I wanted to know what the religious backgrounds of the audiences were, as my big question is always, ‘are we only preaching to the converted?’” Apparently there was resistance to that interest. “Well, in England, much of the negative reaction to our show was from the fundamentalist Muslim communities. Recently, we had a panel discussion after a show in Northern Ireland, where a Muslim psychologist; [another] fellow who was on the Muslim Council of Great Britain; and an advocate for conversion therapy, actually had a dialogue [with us]. I wanted all the perspectives we could have about homosexuality – for and against. I don’t want my pieces to be just a gay whining. In this show, we present all the arguments brought up by religious fundamentalists, both Muslim and Christian, who have protested the equality bill that Parliament passed. We’ve also included interviews by gay men and women who have been gay-bashed. One youngster was stabbed by his father for the ‘crime’ of being gay. I’ve also included arguments from those who while they are opposed to homosexuality, draw the line that one should die for it. We even interviewed some Rastafarians who listen to the music that advocates killing gay peoples.” The rap song with those lyrics opens the show in a stunning prelude to what Newson is fighting.
As part of the interview-process, street kids were interviewed and there he found much more tolerance towards the legal and financial rights of Gays, but even so, with same-sex marriage it was different. “I think because marriage is for them so heavily involved with religion, they’d prefer another name be applied (such as Civil Unions or Partnerships). In 2004, the British government decided to slip into law, without much fanfare, the idea that ‘marriage’ between same-gender couples could work if not put to a public referendum. In that way, unlike the thirty-one states in America which have outlawed gay marriages, couples could have the same rights, automatically, as straights do.”
“To Be Straight With You” took Newson eighteen months of preparation, including four weeks of editing the interviews, followed by intense casting, rehearsal, and adding the incredible stage technology, including animated projections and song lyrics. In addition to the more normal form of interviews, he worked hard to find someone already in prison for gay-bashing. “It took a lot of cajoling, but I found him.” It’s a chilling part of the show. Newson’s company is also prepared for any potential reprisals from the various religious communities who might find disfavor with the show. He successfully cast eight multi-ethnic dancers who could both speak well and move well. The performers – seven British and one American -- work under a better-than-union pay scale.
As part of his company’s diversifying ideas, Newson has also directed several dance films or videos that have won some sixteen important awards, including a Prix Italia and a Rose D’or for, including, “The Cost of Living,” giving others the chance to be inspired by his work.
While Newson is quite willing to let the religious bigot’s opinions stand by themselves, he’s also quite horrified at the idea that he’s bigoted in return. “I’m not saying that all religious people are intolerant, or that all Muslims are violently anti-gay. What I’m talking about is that those who hold extreme religious beliefs are reflected in the stories from the interviews we conducted – in depth and on-the-street casual of some of the folk who reside in London – both genders, all races and all ages.
The current show will next tour to San Francisco and Santa Barbara, California.