La Vida es Sueno, or Life is a Dream, is the University’s latest offering at the Playhouse. Playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca tackles themes of love, loyalty and existentialism, way before existentialism was even cool. This international team of actors and directors brings us a dark and gripping, yet at times comical, story of a man who is torn from riches to rags and back so many times that he begins to question the essence of his own reality.

The play is framed by the Oracle’s monologues, recounting how his own premonition of a brutal ruler led the Polish King, Basilio, to imprison his own son Segismundo. However, the monarch has decided that he should test the veracity of the prophecy by allowing his son to enter his kingdom as the Prince of Poland. Proving the Oracle correct, Segismundo is shortly drugged and thrown back into his cell, having unleashed murder and rape upon the courtiers who dare to contravene his orders. Believing it to have been a dream, Segismundo can’t quite trust in the world that he finds around him upon his second release, this time at the hands of a group of rebels who wish to seize the throne in his name. The challenge, for Segismundo, is to navigate the path between dream and reality, loyalty and betrayal, cruelty and mercy, fate and free will. A number of parallel storylines of love triangles and family reunions provide a welcome relief from the dark depths of the play’s central plot.

The action is set against an unforgiving backdrop of serrated edges and red lighting, an effective complement to the darkness and torment of Segismundo’s character, passionately conveyed by Antón Morant. The musical accompaniment, however, was shrill and jarring, detracting from the linguistic beauty of the script. Whilst a certain amount of melodrama is inherent in the work, the sound effects- along with certain elements of the direction- at times pushed the play from drama into farce, provoking laughter from the audience in moments of supposed gravity.

The true comic element of the play is almost entirely carried by the excellent Teresita Valverde Mójica, whose dance with ‘Death’ was an inspired and hilarious highlight. Another standout performance comes from Ekaterina Spivakovsky Gonzalez, whose subtle and sensitive performance as Rosaura brilliantly captured the depth of her character. The rest of the cast gave mostly decent performances, and largely maintained the eloquence of Calderón’s verse, although the positioning of the subtitles was at times distracting.

On balance, this was an entertaining and thoughtful depiction; an extremely challenging task which highlights the skill of those involved and shows the continuing relevance of Calderón’s work today.

On Monday Keble Arts Festival hosted a poetry evening featuring performances from Steve Larkin, Phoebe Nicholson, Paul Askew and Andrew Ridker. The ways in which the poets interacted with their material made clear the distinction between the performance of poetry and “performance-poetry”. Ridker and Nicholson relied on the natural rhythms of the written word to hold the audience’s attention, while Larkin and Askew’s performances were designed to be theatrical.

Highlights included Steve Larkin, international ‘Slam’ champion of 2004, performing his poem ‘Fat Sex’ – a piece inspired by reading women’s magazines on the loo. Meanwhile, Paul Askew got some laughs with his rendition of ‘The Holiday’ – an angry diatribe against a vacation in Scotland. Phoebe Nicholson created a very different atmosphere, with her powerful readings of ‘Dutch and Flemish Still-Life’; poetry inspired by her Devon home-life; and ‘Cat in the Lanes’ – an ode to her cat who ran away for a year and a half, only to reappear just before her finals. Andrew Ridker amused us with his anecdotal poetry about American life and began by relating his grandmother’s advice to him aged twelve: “women like to talk, but men like to fuck”.

For Phoebe Nicholson, “performing is the best way to get in touch with people and get your work out there”, but she wouldn’t call herself a performance poet. “Poetry performs itself,” she tells us. Nicholson started doing live poetry recitals at the Catweazle Club, a bar in Oxford that hosts open mic nights in which anything goes. She now edits the quarterly magazine ‘Catweazle’, which features a variety of stories, poems and visual arts features. For Nicholson, “there always needs to be an element of sound in poetry but not necessarily through performance – it can be achieved just as much from the cadences on the page”. This is evident in her work, as despite not being intentionally theatrical, the lilting steady rhythm that she adopts is hypnotic. Nicholson’s mellow reading allows the words themselves to resonate.

Paul Askew is right when he says, “I don’t do the whole banter thing very well, so I’ll just do some poems.” Telling us “love poetry is so annoying”, he proceeds to perform his own rendition of a love poem, ‘#YOLO’, in which he explores how many times you can say the word ‘kissing’ before the sound becomes meaningless. A lot of times, as it turns out. His book, Animal Magnetism, comes out in June. This raises the issue of whether performance poetry translates well onto the page. Askew is very aware of this. “The arrogance of page poets is they think they don’t need to put effort into performing, whereas the performance poet often forgets it needs to be edited before going on the page.”

Steve Larkin takes performance-poetry to its extreme, reciting off by heart, and occasionally bursting into song, accompanied by an octave mandolin. He relies on audience participation, and in between poems shows his flair for selfdeprecating stand-up: “I’m at that tricky gap between the time you leave full-time education and the time you die.” Larkin doesn’t publish, and says he never will. He conceives all his work out loud, not on the page, and is irritated by the education system’s insistence on the analysis of poetry.

“The importance of creativity is negated – it distances you from an experience of the actual poetry.” Larkin is the founder of Hammer & Tongue, the biggest promoters of ‘Slam’ poetry in the UK. The final of the Oxford round is on 14th May. Oxford’s decision to appoint Geoffrey Hill over Larkin as Professor of Poetry is perhaps indicative of the fact that performance-poetry has yet to be taken seriously as a medium. But it is at its most refreshing when it reminds us that poetry has always been read aloud.

Adam Wozniak’s decision to shave off his considerable mane of hair in the name of ‘art’ was something that I couldn’t wait to witness. He began his performance with shoulder length hair – presumably the product of at least two years of growth. Five minutes later he was almost bald. I had thought this was a drastic act of attention-seeking, but the look on his face as his tresses fell to the floor said otherwise. It seemed like this actually meant a lot to him. I expected the locks to be lopped off by the artist himself (perhaps with a sword?), but instead we were witnessing a haircut. The barber used an electric razor and worked his way round his scalp in a spiral. The transformation was fascinating to watch and by the end Wozniak looked like a different person. Unfortunately the barber got carried away with the attention and took an excessive amount of time and care in finishing off the cut. This detracted from the momentum of the piece.

When he had finally left, the ‘real’ art began. Wozniak’s hair had fallen to the floor in a matted pile, which he proceeded to make into a rather straggly paintbrush. Using a long wooden pole and some gaffer tape, Wozniak’s tool resembled a broomstick. He then mixed a trough of watery pale blue paint in front of us, smearing the excess on his newly shaved head.

Accompanied by Indian music, Wozniak proceeded to dunk his ‘brush’ in the mixture and turned to face a huge transparent canvas. His method of painting can only be described as esoteric. In mock tai-chi style, Wozniak waved his long pole before beginning a series of bold strokes and occasionally lunging at his canvas. The final piece was a combination of long sweeping lines. It was constructed as a triptych, but he allowed his composition to cross the boundaries of the frame. Although the piece was striking, it was more interesting as a product of the performance than as a standalone work. Bold and bald, Wozniak’s artistic concept was new and engaging. Occasionally the execution was self-indulgent .

Wozniak took his project very seriously, sometimes to a laughable extent. I’m not sure what he was trying to prove, but the performance was a reminder of the transient nature of art: hair today, gone tomorrow

Is a solitary dangling light bulb ‘art’? This was a question that plagued me as I wandered around the Hayward Gallery’s current sellout exhibition – Light Show.

Although some of the works in this exhibition are distinctly unimpressive, what the Hayward Gallery does well is provide a somewhat erratic collection of ‘firsts’. In the last room of the exhibition, strobe lighting is turned on a series of mini water-fountains. Olafur Eliasson uses flashing light to create freeze-frame images of water as it splashes, falls, and bounces off itself. This may not be ‘art’, per se, but it is great fun to watch.

Part of the problem with the exhibition is that many of the rooms contain multiple installations that invariably detract attention from each other. The  most exciting pieces are those allowed rooms of their own. For the two works that submerge you in colour, visitors are required to wear white plastic  overshoes or go barefoot. Removing your shoes in an art gallery is almost as exciting as the three rooms of Chromosaturation, by the Venezuelan artist Carlos Cruz-Diez. They pleasingly demonstrate everything you learned in  school about mixing colours – the walls are veritable rainbows.

Best of all is Anthony McCall’s You and I, Horizontal (2005). A blackened, hazy room features what at first seems to be only a projection. When you stand inside the light and face into the projector, you discover yourself in a smoky light tunnel that seems to have solid walls. Playing with shadows becomes more fun than you could have imagined.

Does the amusement of these “immersive environments” detract from their artistry? Or is the Hayward Gallery right – and light’s ability to ‘sculpt and shape space in different ways’ is what makes it artful? Their blurb tells us: “Light has the power to affect our state of mind as well as alter how we perceive the world around us.”

 
This exhibition has a bit of everything. It varies hugely in quality from cheap optical gimmicks to beautiful and inspiring installations. It features all kinds of light sources – LED, neon, projections, bulbs, stage lights, strobes. Highly complex computer-programmed light displays share rooms with light boxes stolen from scrap heaps. The Hayward Gallery has hit the mark again. They provide exactly what they offer – a show. It is a fairground of light in all of its spatial and sensory forms. As an exhibition, there is no development, merely party trick after party trick. But Light Show challenges what it is to be art. In combination the sculptures and installations create an appreciation of what light is and how it can be artistic. Light Show is refreshing and thought-provoking, but even if you don’t take light bulbs seriously, this exhibition is great fun, and a treat for the eyes.