Vengeance: the word smokes with the simmering intent of dark deeds, done under cover of midnight shadows.
But the mid-afternoon sun is beaming overhead and Al Seed is in genial, smiley mode as he talks about his forthcoming solo show, Everyday Vengeance.
"I started out with just Vengeance as a title," he says, "but it felt too brutal. More chilling than I wanted it to be. So I put 'everyday' in to lighten it a bit, bring it closer to home, closer to our own experiences."
He'll add, later, that it is not autobiographical, but the stories he tells in the course of the performance will probably echo vicious feelings that are familiar to all of us. "There's a pleasure, a joy even, in fantasising about taking revenge," he says.
He pauses, and the smile crooks mischievously: "But then you have to accept that if you try to make the fantasy into a reality, there will be consequences. And those might not be so pleasant."
Unnervingly dark or teasingly light, Everyday Vengeance marks Seed's return to performing live, on-stage, after four years of channelling his creative energies into getting Conflux up and running, and an annual Surge festival cutting capers on the streets of Glasgow. Indeed, come the weekend, the Merchant City will be truly surge-ing with the street arts, circus skills and physical theatre performers that Conflux exists to foster.
Seed explains it's not an either/ or career watershed: he's still at the artistic helm of Conflux, future planning alongside its director and his long-time colleague, Alan Richardson. But the full-on learning curve that began in 2009 – when Lottery funding underpinned the whole initiative – has reached a useful plateau of expertise.
"Basically, we just got better and quicker at things," he says. "I'd never had any kind of role in running an organisation, or a festival. And when you're doing everything for the first time, it takes longer to join things up. Four years on, you find you've all settled into a system that really works. You can afford to get more ambitious with the programming – that's really true now we're a fully independent organisation – but also people come to us a lot more, and with the kind of really interesting ideas that show they have faith in us.
"Next year Surge will be a centrepiece in Glasgow's 2014 programme of events for the Commonwealth Games. We're now in a position to bring together the Scottish-based artists we've always wanted to help develop and the kind of international companies we see as inspirational. It's the kind of collaboration we talked about at the start. Now we're able to make it happen."
In fact that collaboration – which brings together Legs On The Wall (Australia), Lume Teatro (Brazil) and Conflux, with Scottish composer Stephen Deazley in that mix – will be in evidence this Surge. Look up at the cityscape rooftops this weekend and, who knows, you might catch sight of Perch (as it's called) in action. The clue is in the subtitle: a "festival of flying and falling" where impromptu musical interludes will occur on balconies, at windows, among the chimney pots. Even the companies and artists who, apparently, keep their feet on the ground tend to take off into flights of bravura mayhem.
With things motoring nicely at Conflux, Seed felt able to pick up where he left off in terms of his own performance work. More than that, he felt it necessary for his Conflux role to re-engage with all the processes of researching, devising, rehearsing and presenting solo shows.
"I was offered the post in 2009 on the basis of my work as a solo artist," he explains. "I really had no other experience to bring to it. But I did know about training, and what there was – and wasn't – available in Scotland at the time. The longer I spend away from making work, the less benefit I am to Conflux. I really just needed to get back in the studio."
So, how is he following up on the previous successes of The Factory and The Fooligan (which won a Bank of Scotland Herald Angel at the Fringe in 2008)? He looks positively gleeful as he outlines Everyday Vengeance.
"This one is the most stripped back I've done so far. It's an empty stage. I don't have a costume. It is very exposing, yes – but it's no fun if it's not. Vengeance is a well-trodden theatrical theme, so I've tried to deal with it through a number of styles and vantage points. Time was, taking revenge was almost tragically heroic. Romantic even. Certainly very passionate and usually incredibly bloody. Nowadays, you can almost do it by proxy, whether that's through online technology or other people – law courts or the compensation culture. But the motivations still share a kind of visceral energy.
"I think that's tied into people's idea of their own status, of their usually very inflated notion of their own importance. If that's disrespected in any way, they want revenge. The thing is, to commit an act of revenge you really need two people – and I'm doing a solo show. Which makes it an interesting challenge, and maybe takes it to the heart of vengeance as an essentially self-destructive act.
"One where the victim can ultimately be yourself – but maybe you go ahead anyway."
Everyday Vengeance is at the Tron Theatre, Glasgow, from Thursday-Sunday as part of Surge. Full details of Surge 2013 at www.conflux.co.uk and information about the Merchant City Festival is at merchantcityfestival.com.
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