Valentine: In conclusion, I stand affected to her.

 Speed: I would you were set, so your affection would cease.

Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona, II.i.79-81

It feels sacrilegious to say it while sitting in the foyer of the National Theatre in London (I’m here to see Collaborators with Simon Russell Beale, which I justified academically by spending all morning in the British Library looking at playtexts from the early 1600s, and because tickets were only five quid and Simon Russell Beale can do anything, even make Stalin funny), but the rehearsal process for Two Gentlemen of Verona has so far confirmed what I always sort of suspected:

When in doubt about the meaning of a Shakespeare line, it is probably a sex joke.

And don’t think I haven’t done my research looking for hidden subtleties in lines like:

Speed: Why then, how stands the matter with them?

Launce: Marry, this: when it stands well with him, it stands well with her.

(III.v.19-21)

I did just spend an hour riffling through every book on directing in the National’s bookshop, only to discover that most of what’s there is about choosing a play, casting a play, and the initial rehearsal, so I probably ought to have read them a month ago. But I can’t suddenly become cultured and professional now. It would give my cast a heart attack.

There’s no denying that Two Gents is a crass play, full of sarcastic servants and boorish servants, gangster outlaws, and not-particularly-convincing cross-dressing. It’s full of young people meeting other young people. Of course it’s about sex.

A friend asked me why I even picked Two Gents, given my obsession with really human, realistic characters. It’s certainly a far cry from my last stint directing, Brian Friel’s Translations in Trinity 2010. And it’s an early work. We can see the foundations being laid for Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, but Shakespeare’s not quite there yet when he writes Two Gents. He’s a decent playwright, but a little more time and practice are required for him to ascend to god-like status. But there’s something about the way Two Gents depicts young people going to a new place, getting caught up in the glamour and excitement of it, and losing track of who they are and what they value; I have a suspicion that many Oxford students can relate.

So what do we do with all these sex jokes? Do we trust the audience to get them on their own, even when the slang is five hundred years out of date? Do we highlight them with a physical gesture? Or will that just turn the play into a bizarre marathon of thrusting hips and suggestively raised eyebrows? Given that Two Gents has a lot of wooing, a little fighting, an attempted rape, and three different outlaw attacks, it’s certainly a physical play in its own right. In an attempt get the cast to be willing to snog/fight/hug/lean on one another, I’ve introduced both a weird game that is like tag but ends up with spooning other cast members who are crouched in the foetal position, and my personal favourite, the Huggy Bear Game. The cast undertook these exercises in remarkably good humour, with only minimal jokes about me being a lunatic.

All through school I wanted to be an actor, until one day I realised that I love acting but often couldn’t stand actors, so I certainly couldn’t cope with them surrounding me for the rest of my life. The egos, the conflicts, the rivalries, and the drama: So. Much. Drama. But theatre always pulls you back in (I’m seriously contemplating a heroin addiction as a healthier alternative), and the Two Gents cast is a fun, down-to-earth bunch. Aside from the days when a certain leading man just doesn’t show up to rehearsal and I sort of want to strangle him, or when I have to ask an actor to ‘say that again, but at least a little bit like you mean it’, and despite my terror regarding Wednesday’s first run-through, I do love the Two Gents cast.

And luckily, the Two Gents cast finds Shakespeare’s sex jokes as funny as I do.

Kate O’Connor is the director for Barbarian Productions’ The Two Gentlemen of Verona to be performed May 1st-5th in Christ Church Cathedral Gardens, complete with penis jokes. Tune in next week for an actor’s perspective, and for more information about Two Gents visit their website, www.barbarian-productions.com, or follow them on twitter @twogentsox.

As Andy Warhol lay upon the factory floor, profusely bleeding from the bullet wounds administered by actress and author Valerie Solanas, it was Billy Name who clutched him to his breast and supported him, as he supported him throughout his entire star-studded career. From the opening of the factory on East 47th Street in 1962, Warhol thought of Name, his lover, friend and contemporary, as a man who ‘inspired confidence. He gave the impression of being generally creative … I picked up a lot from Billy.’ 

Name and Warhol first came into contact in the early days of the 1960s, when the former was working as a lighting designer with Nick Cernovich and playing as a musician at the Theatre of Eternal Music. Name recalls ‘it was the end of the period of the romantic avant-garde bohemia, when artists ‘kept’ younger artists and a male artist would always have a young man around.’ Soon enough, Warhol and Name began a relationship of both professional and personal passion. ‘I started working with Andy when he first got the loft space which became the factory in January 1963’ he tells me. ‘We were friends and lovers for some years before that.’

Name’s work at the factory was famous. It was Name that instigated the iconic ‘silverising’ of the factory, bedecking every inch of the place with tin foil, shattered mirrors and silver ornament – a look Warhol picked up from Name’s identically silverised apartment. As Warhol’s work rocketed to renown, Name became chief photographer at the factory, converting a bathroom into a darkroom and taking up residence in a storage cupboard. Name captured celebrated shots of Warhol’s self-titled superstars in all their avant-garde glory — polished to perfection at legendary parties and orgies, celebrating fake weddings and crashing on the factory’s beloved red sofa after amphetamine-addled adventures.

Even today, Name’s identity is defined by this flurry of photography, his brief capturing of a world of pop, plastic and primary colours. Silk screen prints of his factory photos are to be displayed at the New York Metropolitan museum of art this September. As I question him about his artistic legacy, and the legacy the factory left with him, his role in the Warhol story becomes clear. ‘I was a character at the factory in its day. My work as narrator began after Andy died. Many people are interested in the work and scene of the factory. I respond to these people.’ Warhol created the idea of the fifteen minutes of fame, and it is because of Name’s continuing work that his own legacy has not been lost in the blink and speed of a shutter.

 

In 1979 Andy Warhol spoke about Studio 54 in an interview, manipulating his own already infamous quote: ‘It’s the place where my prediction from the sixties finally came true: ‘In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.’ I’m bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, ‘In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous.’’ As usual, Warhol was being both oblique and articulate, but the quote accurately described the club. It was the location for your ‘fifteen minutes’.

Studio 54 was initially converted from a theatre into a nightclub in 1977 and immediately became the place to be seen. The opening night was graced by Debbie Harry, Michael Jackson, Jerry Hall and even Salvaldor Dalí among a host of other names; those at the top of their game, mainly musically, but also from every artistic field. It was the coolest people of a generation in one club with some alcohol thrown into the mix and a soundtrack that showcased the best of disco in particular and music in general. Unfortunately said alcohol caused the club an early hiccup and a run-in with the authorities, followed only a couple of years afterwards with another closure due to allegations of fraud. The club was, however, re-launched with Warhol himself in attendance and became a golden place for new music.

Madonna, Wham! and Culture Club all performed at the club on their rise to fame, cementing it in music history. The old adage of ‘sex, drugs and rock’n’roll’ was never more adept. The club was a hotbed of all three, with young music and film stars mixing with those  deemed beautiful and interesting enough on the door. If you were young, gifted and talented it was the place to be. But, like all the best things, it quickly burnt itself out. By the late 80s, only a decade after it was first opened as a nightclub, Studio 54 was almost over. 

Studio 54 was an inspiration. Anything went; in fact, the more outrageous the better. Of course, it was also a hub for drugs and plagued by financial and red tape difficulties, but this only adds to the myth. The artistic and the beautiful drank, danced and watched the next big thing rise. Even Frank Sinatra once failed to get past the doorman. The policy of mixing the beautiful with the famous created a concept that was bigger than the club itself. It wasn’t models or actresses or artists or people after their own ‘fifteen minutes’ by themselves in their own little niche, it was all of them thrown together in a riot of glitter with Blondie’s ‘Heart of Glass’ on the soundtrack. 

At its peak the club was the most well known nightclub in the world. It had a huge impact on clubbing culture and spread of disco music globally. But the legacy it left was more than that: it broke some damn good artists and, most of all, it gave people a damn good time. Warhol hit the nail on the head with his assertion that it was all about feeling (or being) famous, no matter who you were. It’s one of those places any music fan would travel in their time machine to. Though, I’m not sure I’d have been let in at the door.

There is a video, complete with slightly dodgy German subtitles, of an interview with Lou Reed, circa 1993, looking still almost impossibly young and with the very same Brooklyn drawl. I am never quite sure if  Reed’s voice sounds like the hiss of a cigarette being extinguished in the dregs of a dram of whisky, or whether that is only the surroundings in which it is best experienced: regardless, it constitutes one of the more memorable baritones of the last fifty years of pop music. He leans in to the camera, and says: ‘The advantage of having Andy Warhol as a producer was that, because it was Andy Warhol, they would leave everything in its pure state.’ Cue a vaguely hilarious impression of Warhol, and an earnest acknowledgement to the camera that, with Warhol’s input, or lack thereof, the Velvet Underground’s records were able to come out ‘exactly like they’d been made.’

Reed was only 23 when, in 1965, Andy Warhol became the band’s manager and producer to spectacular effect. Warhol’s unique cachet of cool afforded the Velvet Underground an incredible quantity of artistic freedom, such that, even though The Velvet Underground and Nico (arguably the best record of the 20th century) only sold 10,000 copies, as Brian Eno puts it, ‘everyone who bought it formed a band.’ Indeed, artists as disparate as Kraftwerk, David Bowie and My Bloody Valentine have cited the group as an influence. This is not to say that Warhol simply placed his stamp on the band and left them to it: between 1965 and 1967, they formed an integral part of his technicolour multimedia roadshow, Exploding Plastic Inevitable. It is tempting to think of this as ‘The Andy Warhol Show: he sings, he dances!’ – and certainly there was an element of self-promotion to the roadshow, which showcased performances from more glamorous members of Warhol’s factory, screenings of Warhol’s films and music by the Velvet Underground, as curated by Warhol.

However, what this meant in practice was a secure recording contract with MGM’s Verve Records – exceptionally good shoulders to rub with and unprecedented free rein over the sound they created. Warhol controlled the image. The first step to establishing this was introducing ridiculously beautiful German model-turned-singer Nico. The second was, inevitably, the banana. The image is lurid and almost obscene (heightened by the rather unsubtle pink peeled banana revealed by ‘peeling [the sticker of the banana skin] slowly’) – and remarkably powerful. Warhol’s name is in the bottom right hand corner, in late 30s script typeface Coronet: a mass-produced signature. The band’s name is nowhere to be found. The disappointing sales of this album led to the deterioration of their relationship with both Warhol and Nico, with their subsequent album recorded with Tom Wilson as producer. The proof of the partnership, however, lies in the pudding. Lou Reed looks into the camera once again and says, ‘We’re all alive to see history validated somehow. Not only us, but Andy’s faith in us. We have time to point to as the real judge of who or what did what first, best and always. The proof is in the work, and the work is on the record.’

On February 22nd, exactly 25 years after Andy Warhol drew his last breath, Rocky Horror creator Jim Sharman launched an online tribute, or  ‘cinematic séance’, dedicated to the life and death of the legendary artist. Decidedly not a biopic, the featurette consists of 40 minutes worth of music, colour and imagery. 

This trippy reverie captures the essence of Warhol on many levels; the visual experience emulates his bold vibrancy and strobe-like multiplication and the looseness of the structure, and dislocation from strict chronology, calls back to the freedom and near-chaos of Warhol’s circle, particularly at the locus of the factory.

The very nature of the film’s dissemination aligns with Warhol’s perspective on art’s place in society and the rapidly self-reproductive ability of images in the modern world. Sharman commented: ‘Online movies are a new art form and their potential is evolving, yet cyberspace seems the perfect place to explore the Warhol enigma. I imagine Warhol would have loved the net, and we’ve enjoyed creating this unique 40 minute portrait.’

Despite these broad links, the film fails to illuminate the subtleties of Warhol’s existence and largely reinforces a popular and simplified characterization. 

The performance art aspects are stilted and struggle to connect in any recognisably human way with Warhol’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities.  Such scenes include an encounter between the hospitalised Warhol and another version of himself who assures him  of his worth, expressing this sensually over a pair of red patent leather shoes, as well as a depiction of Valerie Solanas’ attempted murder of Warhol in 1968, which focusses on a bright, bloody handprint on a glass door as he struggles to escape. The efforts spent on aestheticising these exchanges obscures the real force of what is going on. And, just as Warhol has been marginalised in every recent film in which he has been depicted,  (Factory Girl, The Doors and Basquiat), even here he is pushed to the side by Sharman’s commitment to mirroring his aesthetic.

The  music barely even engages with the atmosphere evoked by Warhol’s art and the lyrics remain firmly in the real of function and narrative. Additionally, the music inevitably suffers from comparisons to the musical achievements of Warhol’s associates, particularly in the light of The Velvet Underground’s similar project meditating on Warhol’s life, their album Songs for Drella.

Significant as an internet movement, this short film may not live up to the hype surrounding its release, but it you’re willing to part with the $6.99 fee then it will provide an interesting insight into the way Warhol lives in today’s consciousness.

A Year in Tibet

2nd March, New College

Adventurer, writer and filmmaker Sun Shyun shows clips of her documentary A Year in Tibet, and speaks about her experience travelling in the Autonomous Region of Tibet.

Doors  7.30pm

This means War

General release 2nd February

The romantic comedy is given an espionage twist in this big-name spy caper, with Chris Pine and Tom Hardy attempting to out-Bond one another for the attentions of Reese Witherspoon. Licence to thrill.

The Best in Stand-up

3rd March, Oxford Glee Club

Featuring seasoned but somewhat unknown performers, such as Jarred Christmas, Mike Bubbins,  Kevin McCarthy and Marlon Davis, this stands to be a varied bill of guaranteed laughs.

Tickets £14/£5 with NUS card. No entry after 8pm

The Speech Project

3rd March, North Wall Arts Centre

Using the rhythms and natural melody found in Irish speech, composer and producer Gerry Driver showcases a unique collection of new music. 

Tickets £14/£10. Doors 7.45pm

Oxford Ukuleles

5th March, The Port Mahon

An informal workshop session for the YouTube instrument of the moment. All abilities welcome; no strings attached.

Tickets £3. Doors 7.30pm

Yes, Prime Minister

5th-10th of March

The writers of the classic BBC TV series reunite for this anniversary production, with the PM facing disaster in a world of spin and sexed-up dossiers.

Tickets £16.50-23.50, Doors 2.30/7.30/8pm

Eclectric present Objekt

In 1929 the Beijing opera star Mei Lanfang embarked on his first tour of the US. Mei soon found himself showcased as little more than a musical oddity and, on arrival in Seattle, was promptly arrested as an illegal immigrant. Several decades later, Sino-US relations are very different. In January 2011, the Chinese pianist Lang Lang was invited to a White House state dinner in honour of China’s President Hu Jintao. That evening, Lang Lang performed the song ‘My Motherland’, written for the 1956 Chinese film on the Korean War, Battle on Shangganling Mountain, and whose original lyrics include the line ‘we deal with wolves with guns’, a direct reference to the US. Lang Lang’s performance immediately provided ammunition for conservative American commentators, who accused the pianist of seeking to further ingratiate himself with the powers that be in Beijing, channelling the Chinese government’s political intent and directly humiliating the US. Writing on his blog the following night, Lang Lang described playing ‘My Motherland’ as a performance in which ‘I was telling them about a powerful China and a unified Chinese people.’ There’s a whole mix of emotions in that, and all of it political.

He certainly delighted the Chinese delegates present, but beyond the immediate controversy, Lang Lang’s performance spoke of something far deeper – a reversal of a long one-sided exchange of music. For decades China had imported Western music while Westerners mocked China’s. Even China’s early introduction to classical music was humiliating, spread via Christian missionaries flooding into the country after the Opium Wars.  

In 2009 Lang Lang was listed in Time’s ‘100 Most Influential People in the World’ – an incredible accolade for a classical musician. How does he feel about being one of China’s most influential ambassadors? ‘I am very interested in presenting Chinese culture and doing work for cultural communication,’ he enthuses. Born 30 years ago in the industrial city of Shenyang, Lang Lang’s musical upbringing in many ways embodies the volatile relationship his country holds with classical music. While Lang Lang has devoted his career to the piano, the instrument par excellence of the Western tradition, his father is a master of the erhu, a traditional Chinese stringed instrument. ‘I grew up practising piano every day and listening to my father’s erhu playing,’ Lang Lang recalls. ‘The erhu fascinated me. It has an extremely emotional sound.’

From the start, Lang Lang was brought up in cultural complexity. The piano is an industrial instrument, forever associated with the European bourgeoisie, and its Western 12-note chromatic scale is far removed from any traditional Chinese aesthetic. Lang Lang is keen to stress his inheritance of both traditions, ‘I studied Western music as a foundation, and was influenced by Eastern music in some ways. I think it somehow made my playing characterized.’ How does Lang Lang think China has managed to straddle its traditions, and the reception of Western classical music? He offers some typically optimistic advice. ‘There are ways of making better understanding between West and East. People should never fear to open themselves.’

There are many ways of looking at Lang Lang, and by far the most popular one is to see the story of an incredible musical talent. Lang Lang’s career is grounded in a highly pressured musical education. His father took the five-year-old Lang Lang to Beijing, leaving behind his job as a policeman and Lang Lang’s mother, and instead devoting himself to getting his son into the Central Conservatory of Music. The pressures of life in slum conditions soon took their toll, with Lang Lang’s father at one point demanding that his son take his own life, after he missed a few hours of practising. Looking back at his hot-housed upbringing, Lang Lang is understandably guarded about his relationship with his father. ‘He was strict but my career is based on interest. I chose the career by myself, and I had the motivation to practise.’ The success of Lang Lang’s career is well documented. He enjoys endorsement contracts stretching from Adidas to Montblanc. Even his name is trademarked.

Lang Lang’s most celebrated cause lies in China’s classical music education, with the recent mass turn to the piano by 30 million Chinese children being labelled ‘the Lang Lang effect’. Lang Lang is well aware that classical music’s future essentially lies in the Asian market. ‘China is a new hope for classical music, where there are millions of children learning instruments.’ And it is the piano above all others that they are turning to. ‘The piano is usually people’s first choice,’ Lang Lang agrees, ‘it has a rich sound, it has orchestrated character, and there are countless great works for the piano.’ Lang Lang’s passion for education is far more than rhetoric. ‘I hope to enlarge the population of classical music listeners in the next generation,’ he says, ‘and I opened up my first school “Lang Lang Music World” in Shenzhen, China, at the beginning of this year.’

Significantly, Lang Lang attaches this national musical enthusiasm to a more traditional inheritance. ‘Chinese people traditionally love music,’ he explains, ‘their Confucian system had set music education as a basic education since ancient times.’ But the piano’s history in China has been one of instability – an object open to hostility during the Cultural Revolution where it was the instrument of intellectual urbanists caught up in a society rejecting Western cultural imperialism. Revolution severed ties between China’s musicians and the cultural heart of Western Europe. Instead it was the Soviet Union which deeply influenced China’s musical development, with Chinese artists caught up in an effort to search for an aesthetically national music. China’s relationship with the art of its former oppressors is a deeply troubled one. The shifts are extreme; what looks like stability today rests on shallow foundations and feelings of insecurity abound. Mao’s anti-western, anti-classical music campaigns are not much more than three decades old.

I ask Lang Lang why he thinks China’s middle classes in particular are now so fascinated by Western classical music, despite the country’s narratives of historical humiliation and Chinese nationalism. ‘Music is a universal language’, he claims, ‘Chinese people may speak it in a Chinese accent, but Western classical music has a grand tradition with a beauty that people everywhere can love.’ Like many classical musicians, Lang Lang presents his art as universal, despite this idea being historically perpetuated by a Western perspective on power. 

To fully understand the future complexities that classical music faces, we need to be wary of politically naïve approaches. It is striking how the Chinese government controls its arts policies almost as closely as its military secrets. Classical music in China may be an art form that sits on the margins of national culture, yet it is also tied to the country’s politics – Lang Lang is already a proven ambassador. The state is inextricably involved in music in China, discouraging dissent but handsomely rewarding those who play the game through prizes, prominent posts and payment. Music journalists are caught up in China’s daily performance of musical politics, with the perpetual pressure to deliver favourable coverage when necessary.

Two weeks ago I watched Lang Lang deliver a speech to the Oxford Union. The Union may like to advertise itself as a bastion of free speech, but it was quickly made clear to all of us in the chamber that no political questions were to be allowed. What is left when you take the political out of Lang Lang? The pianist rattled off a polished speech about his belief in a musical education, and at the end students were allowed to ask him about his memorable performances, why he prefers the piano, and whether he likes hip-hop. Lang Lang may not have wanted to talk about politics in Oxford, but his White House performance shows he is quite ready to play politics himself.

Lang Lang is clear on one thing. ‘I grew up in China with Chinese traditions and morals. Even if I am not in China, I still feel a special connection – it is where my roots are and my dreams start.’ Today it seems easy to separate music from politics in the West, where most of our prominent classical musicians appear to us to be essentially apolitical. But China has long seen cultural prowess as central to the validation of power. While the music scene in China is becoming ever more rich and diverse, the creative climate is critically handicapped not just by commercial pressures, as in the West, but also by omnipresent political pressure. Beyond its homeland, classical music’s aesthetic attraction has long been bolstered by the West’s superior political and economic power. Now that power is shifting, classical music’s fate lies increasingly in the East, and its future there looks far from simple.