Performance
Outskirts Festival 2018
Platform, The Bridge, Glasgow
Mary Brennan
three stars
On Saturday, just about every nook and cranny of Platform became home to the venue’s Outskirts Festival and its mix of music, film, visual art, workshops and live performance. The energising spirit of this event is inspirational inclusivity, with the involvement of the local community a genuine priority. This was certainly the case when Joey Simons, Platform’s social historian in residence, invited writers James Kelman and Tom Leonard to join him in an affable, informative - sometimes poignant - excursion into the life and work of the late Freddie Anderson. The Irish poet, novelist and playwright had, for decades until his death in 2001, made his home in Easterhouse but - as soon became clear - he’d also been a vivid part of Glasgow’s left wing culture and folk music scene. Kelman and Leonard put their own works aside, to read from Anderson’s poetry and prose and to flesh out their friend’s character and talent with anecdotes that also fuelled the attendant discussion of “who decides what writing should be publicly supported? Published and/or performed? Or indeed remembered?” Anderson struggled for full and proper recognition in his lifetime - Simons flagged up initiatives to remedy that in the near future.
Elsewhere, Company of Wolves presented Unbecoming, a solo work created and performed by Anna Porubcansky in which her live soundscore, with its looping and overlaying of recorded layers and real-time vocalisings echoed the complex layers of a woman caught in a swithering vortex of choices and desires. Was she the panic-stricken new mother, fearful of life at every turn? Or the siren in a red dress surrendering to the hands roaming across her body? Is the final, inner reconciliation - a litany of “I will never...” moments - convincing? This piece may well shape-shift with time. Outskirts, meanwhile is clearly going from strength to strength.
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