Donnchadh O’Conaill puts the Durham theatre scene in the spotlight  

 

            Durham theatre types indulge in endless self-analysis, but it is often rather insular in nature. The points of reference are usually other Durham thesps or productions, with occasional nods to what’s going on London or what was hot at the Fringe last summer. But you’re not comparing like with like here: even when you see shows from other universities at the Fringe, you’re seeing only a sample, and you never know how representative it is. I did my BA and MA in University College Cork, an institution of roughly the same size and vintage as Durham, and I saw quite a bit of theatre there (as well as putting on a little). It might be instructive to see how Durham fares in comparison with theatre in another university, for a change one which does not begin with ‘Ox-’ or end with ‘-bridge’.

 

In a lot of ways, the Durham scene is far healthier than Cork’s (at least, Durham now seems healthier than Cork was, way back then). Most obviously, there are far more plays staged in Durham. The DST website lists twenty-eight production companies, which use a variety of venues. In Cork, the theatre society puts on most of the shows themselves, with occasional performances by other societies, so you get one or at most two productions a week, almost all at the same venue. There was no discernible difference in talent – the best actors in Cork during my time there would match the best I’ve seen here. But the sheer volume of productions gives Durham a disproportionate number of experienced actors and technical staff, and this helps give productions here a more assured feel.

 

The number of shows allows certain styles which are much less common in Ireland to flourish – comedy revue, musicals, and recently opera. It also facilitates productions of widely differing scale and ambition. One of the joys of Durham theatre is being able to stage tiny productions with amusingly nonexistent budgets, sets made of tenuous connections and fragile dreams, and a cast including everyone who auditioned plus your flatmate who’s never set foot on stage before. It’s all very well being part of a cast of thousands in a DULOG or CTC extravaganza with a budget to rival that of the London Olympics, but to really sort the men from the boys you need to be involved with a spoof film noir playing to a paying audience of two in Fountain’s Hall in darkest, grimmest Grey. This is Durham’s theatrical Vietnam; only the strong or the slightly unhinged can survive.

 

 

            On the negative side, the Granary Theatre in Cork is light years ahead of anything here bar the Gala, both as a space and in terms of its technical specifications (and the presence of a full-time technical co-ordinator). It’s a minor miracle anything good gets done in the Assembly Rooms – the stage is one-dimensional and very hard to vary, technical facilities are limited, and even the auditorium is awkwardly shaped (long, not wide). And Durham has no studio space at all, which is mind-boggling given how many shows each year would be perfectly suited to such an environment.

 

            Unlike Cork, there is no drama studies department in Durham. I’m not sure this is entirely a negative thing. It does mean that everyone involved here has to more or less learn from scratch, with inevitable amateurishness and repeated reinventions of the theatrical wheel. But on the plus side Durham shows are labours of love, and are not dominated by someone’s particular ideas of staging or performance. And God knows student theatre can be an earnest enough experience without having po-faced interpretations of dramatic theory inflicted on actors and audiences alike.

           

On the whole, then, Durham has it pretty good, at least on this comparison. In particular, the theatrical scene has a vibrancy that people can overlook. Yes, it often seems like it’s the same ten or twenty people turning up in each show, but it’s not. In Durham, you can discover excellent productions in far-flung college plays, and performers you’ve never heard of can spring up ex nihilo (my favourite actor I’ve seen in Durham, Nick Robson, performed on the Assembly Rooms stage exactly once in his time here).

 

But this can be a mixed blessing. Many actors arguably do too much theatre, often more than one production at once, with inevitable results as regards focus and attention to detail. In particular, there are very few thriving and developing partnerships between directors and actors, or between directors and writers. Readers of a certain vintage will remember Captain Theatre and the Mark Quartley-Johnny Scott Axis of Breathtaking Modernity; for better or for worse, there’s been nothing like that since they graduated. I’m inclined to think it’s for the worse; while university drama should be a social experience, people will almost always get more satisfaction if they develop their talents and push themselves as far as they can. Partnerships or rep companies aren’t necessary for this, but they help a lot.

           

And for all the variety of shows, there’s still a certain conservatism in Durham theatre. Naturalism and straightforward comedy are the dominant styles. This is hardly surprising, but there is very little reaction against it, which seems odd in a university environment. There are very few shows that do something really out of the ordinary – site-specific work, unusual kinds of text, new ways of presenting material. Also, given the volume of theatre produced, there is little enough original writing, and almost none at all outside the DDF and the sketch shows.

 

This is partly down to the great Durham public’s insatiable desire for more Shakespeare/Wilde/ musicals/Naz Osmanoglu, and distrust of anything not featuring these sacred elements. But there also seems to be a reluctance on the part of companies to take risks which are, let’s face it, pretty minimal. In university theatre the financial cost is always relatively small, no careers are in danger of being ended by bad reviews (which are rare enough in any case), and even if no-one else likes it, your flatmates will get a cheap laugh. And when it succeeds, it can transform a whole production. Successful examples from this year include Cassie Bradley being cast as a bovver boy in East, the ‘buried child’ scene in Pillowman, Rebecca MacKinnon sitting immobile on floor for a good fifteen minutes before 4.48 Psychosis, and the use of silhouettes in The Canterbury Tales. In each case the element of risk involved made the device all the more striking. Everyone should try something completely out of the ordinary, at least once. There’s a good chance they won’t let you do so at KPMG (or the RSC, for that matter).