Ever since the London International Festival of Theatre (Lift) was launched in 1981 by Rose Fenton and Lucy Neal, it has made a lively contribution to London life. Every other year until 2001, theatre companies arrived from all over the world to provoke, stimulate and entertain, expanding our understanding both of the cultures from which they came and of the nature of theatre itself. There were major productions by the Maly Theatre, Katona Jozsef, and the Wooster Group, as well as events which made us look at London through new eyes; whether it was Deborah Warner exploring the Midland Hotel before the developers moved in; Christophe Berthonneau letting off fireworks on the Thames; or the Hanoi Water Puppets connecting with the Vietnamese community in Greenwich Park. Summer in the city was always more exciting when Lift was around.
Then the plates started to shift and for once it had little to do with money. On the one hand, other companies, such as the Barbican, the Southbank Centre and Sadler’s Wells, began bringing major international companies to London all the year round. On the other, Fenton and Neal started to ask whether there could not be a new way of showing international work; whether the idea of companies docking for a couple of days before moving on was the most creative way of working. So, with an admirable lack of defensiveness, they initiated a lengthy enquiry and later announced their departure.
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Their successor, Angharad Wynne-Jones, shares Fenton and Neal’s curiosity and openness. The Welsh-Australian, who worked with the maverick Peter Sellars on the Adelaide Festival, applied for the job because, she says, ‘I was really impressed by an organisation of the longevity and profile of Lift being so adventurous as to publicly explore what the function of the festival was, and what the function of theatre was.’
Lift had often in the past put artists together with those communities that others frequently ignore, and this was the area that Wynne-Jones chose to develop. It was fortuitous that she picked east London to put down new roots before London won the Olympics. Crucial to this work is the creation, after public consultation, of a wedge-shaped, mobile performance space, known as The Lift, that will function as a place for performance, screenings and, indeed, discussions. ‘It’s a beautiful, functional, multi-purpose venue,’ explains Wynne-Jones, ‘and also a public work of art that’s been created with hundreds of people. In the process of creating that space, we got to know each other and to work out what kind of projects people are interested in and what being international means to people living in London, in itself the most international city in the world.’
The challenge is to explain this kind of work to a wider public. Lift’s recent newsletters have made fans of the old festival wonder when the talk is going to end and there’s going to be something to see. Isn’t the role of artists surely not to follow, but to lead in directions that the rest of us may never have thought of before? Wynne-Jones, unsurprisingly, doesn’t agree: ‘Professional artists have been involved in all these consultations and they are bringing all of their subversive, interesting qualities to the discussions, and that’s what makes them zing.’ She’s excited by the way the conversations have gone, both on a local level and with the International Associates (thankfully, their original name of 'Seekers' has been abandoned), who have been set the task of finding work in their own countries that links with the topics that have been raised in the workshops. A participatory process – one that has given the Lift team an intimate knowledge of the bus routes in east London – has, she believes, encouraged a different way of enjoying art by those who might normally feel that it was not for them.
From those discussions, the festival that is about to start, both in Stratford and on the South Bank, has been curated. It’s a long way from the idea of an artistic director chewing up the air miles, flying from one international festival to the next, picking and choosing who to invite to their own event. Alarmingly, Wynne-Jones hasn’t even seen the shows that will be playing this summer. She insists, however, that she knows them all intimately and talks eloquently about ‘Dangalnama’, a production from India that she identifies as one that anyone interested in theatre should see. ‘It’s a history of riots from the ’80s,’ she explains. ‘Race riots, religious riots, poverty-induced riots. The piece examines the reasons for those riots in which some of the performers were involved. I think it will be an amazing production, especially in the context of Stratford East.’ Another theatre piece, ‘Every Year, Every Day, I Am Walking’, comes from South Africa. Alongside this work, there are films, discussions (of course), ‘Kitchen Banter’, story and dance workshops, craft clubs and karaoke.
Asked what she hopes to have achieved by the end of her first festival, Wynne-Jones replies: ‘We will have launched the structure. We will have road-tested the model of creating a collaborative programme. I think it will give us the confidence to carry on inviting international work that really connects with east London residents, as opposed to thinking about London as an urban backdrop to an arts event.’
Lift Festival 2008 is in Stratford from June 12-21 and at the Southbank Centre from June 26-July 6 (0844 412 4317/www.liftfest.org.uk).
