Remember 1966? All the sudden U-turns and slow-cooked changes in the arts world since then?

People Show remember, because they were there. The company started its journey 48 years ago and has been producing work, kicking, screaming and enduring ever since. Today they proudly call themselves ‘the longest running alternative company in the UK’, but back then the terms ‘visual theatre’ and ‘performance art’ weren’t on everyone’s lips.  The core members may have changed, new artists may have joined, and the tides certainly have turned, but People Show – an entity more than a simple collection of individuals – have persevered in keeping the spirit and the ethos of the company alive.

Longevity is not always the trade mark of theatre companies, let alone alternative ones: reason enough to sit down with People Show and talk changes, new generations, and the misuse of the term ‘experimental’. Plus we discuss People Show 124: Fallout and People Show 127: Hands Off ahead of the upcoming performances at Artsadmin.

Run Riot: With 127 shows in the bag, different core members and an abundance of Associate Artists in the mix, People Show has made it where few theatre companies do: to the age of 48. What’s the secret of longevity?

People Show: This is best answered by a short extract written by People Show’s founding member, Mark Long:

"The essence of the People Show is essentially the same now as it was in 1966. A creative entity of artists with a desire to work together as equals. To contribute and interfere with each-other's disciplines with relative impunity. To create a performance. This remains as true today as it did then. I look back at PS number 1. Technically very basic, possibly louder, maybe a touch more arrogant, spatially completely flexible and fitted into a couple of suitcases. But then this is all totally true of People Show now. Have we made no progress? There have of course been many major spectacles of sophistication. We have got better at what we do, maybe at the expense of a little rawness. And of course some of us look more evolved, older. The People Show has never been ruled by superficial dogma. Its ideals live in the spirit of the work. In the belief that all members are expected to explore their creative fantasies as Artists. That form is never a limitation of possibility. Thus we provide Artists a unique platform to bring the strengths of their particular discipline to the show. Renewal. We try within our financial constraints to encourage a newer generation to use the experience of the older. So there is the sense of a continual life of possibility and intrigue."

Run Riot: What’s been the most striking or significant change in the UK theatre landscape over the last decades?

People Show: We think the most significant change has been funding. Back in the 80’s, half a dozen People Show Artists were on yearly wages. Now artists have to be paid to create work within a restricted amount of time. This results in a very different way of working. Work could develop naturally over a greater amount of time rather than it having to fit to a schedule and time of engagement. Funding structures and guidelines have changed the type of work and the way it can be made.

When People Show started creating work, the type of work that is now most regularly called ‘performance art’ wasn’t happening anywhere else. Now it is a part of the mainstream. When we started, the term ‘performance art’ didn’t even exist. Now it’s a whole world in which the left field has come into the mainstream with numerous higher education courses and work being curated regularly on a very broad scale. There’s more competition for a company to find their place and their niche in this field and to then build their audience.

Run Riot: Can you tell us about your devising process? How do you negotiate the old-standing relationships within the company with the fresh(er) air of associates who might be comparatively new to People Show?

People Show: The devising process has always come from individuals being in a room together and starting from scratch. The end result therefore becomes a product of those individuals’ imaginations. The process has remained the same, it is just the individuals and what they bring to the room that is the variable factor.

New artists who may be new to this process are encouraged to listen and ask questions and get involved and just go with it. It’s all about seeing where it goes. There must be trust in the process and faith in what you can bring to it.

Ultimately it is a genuinely open process in which there are no rules. It is everyone’s responsibility to make a show happen.

Run Riot: Recent Gamergate events exposed the dialectics of gaming: it’s mass consumed, but still functions as a niche. What aspects of gaming do you venture into with Hands Off?

Hands Off examines the idea of the controller and the abuse that can come from that. It delves into the idea of role play and the physical embodiment of being in a game. We found a power from distancing ourselves from the immersive realities of gaming. The Artists found that less is more. They are told what is in the game and what they are experiencing. By creating the world around them they are also creating a distance from that world which is exactly the same as you do by virtually moving around a city by just moving your thumbs.

Hands Off has been heavily influenced by the games we have played and researched such as Sims, GTT, Arcade games, COD, Limbo, gaming in a wider sense (such as dungeons and dragons), Tinder and the way we seek reward in these games over anything else. We discovered how we have become desensitised to death just because we are trying to score points.

In Hands Off we have stripped away the physicality of the characters. There is no particular character being represented. We are not intending on replicating what you experience in game but more the ideas of what exist in a game, such as the mechanisms involved. It is the singularity of the action that dictates how the game works and is played.

Run Riot: Hands Off features three generations of People Show artists; why was this important for a piece exploring the virtual realities of gaming?

It isn’t important.

Run Riot: Hands Off and Fallout are both concerned with mass phenomena, albeit very different ones: the latter is occupied with media induced fear (and football post-match analysis!). What makes the two a ‘suitable’ double bill?

Although not overly different in terms of both being concerned with mass phenomena, Hands Off and Fallout are very different in form. They are both important as being two representations of the variety of work People Show create although they have both used the same process of devising. Hands Off and Fallout are our most recent work and are significant in that they have come from the same core group of artists who have had input into both. We have almost returned to the point that was covered earlier in that they were developed over a greater amount of time between Artists who have had regular contact with each other. A greater focus of time from working together has been given to both instead of the devising process being an intense experience as is more regularly the case within the wider field.

Run Riot: People Show has been making alternative and experimental work since the company’s inception. What do you consider experimental today? Who do you consider experimental in 2014?

We have found that companies that are often described as being ‘experimental’ hate to be referred to as being ‘experimental’. We feel that the term ‘experimental’ has come to be redundant as it can mean multiple things to different people. It is something that has been taken into the mainstream to then become something different from what a company intends their work to say. However, work that we recommend for pushing boundaries and challenging the audience would be: Stan’s Café, Jerome Bel, Forced Entertainment, and Urban Conceptz. 

Run Riot: The company is fast approaching its 50th birthday. Any plans in the run-up to the impressive anniversary?

Apart from massive amounts of cake and fireworks we have lots of projects on the horizon for People Show as we get closer to our 50^th year. We have a short film planned for the New Year, a book in process, a potential sequel to 121: the Detective Show, an autumn 2015 UK tour, a project to celebrate the archives called Expedition, ongoing educational work and projects with universities, to ultimately conclude with a large scale production in 2016. We are definitely a company to watch at the moment. It’s going to be big!

People Show 124: Fallout and People Show 127: Hands Off

27-29 November

Artsadmin