WHAT do the ancient Greek myth of Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur, controversial 18th-century Scottish politician Henry Dundas and the war in Ukraine have in common?
They are all subjects that connect, in one way or another, with the latest work by innovative theatre-maker Al Seed.
Titled Plinth, Seed’s latest piece is ostensibly about “the role and re-appraisal of statues”. Inevitably, however, this opens the show up to a whole host of subjects, including notions of heroism and war, and how human societies memorialise them.
Seed is the writer, creator and performer of his own work. Plinth will be his third show (after The Factory and Oog) that takes war as its subject. War, the dramatist points out, is not an aberration, but “a constant human activity”.
Although the piece is the latest in a series of works on this theme, the theatre-maker acknowledges that recent events have impacted upon the creation of the show. These events include the murder of George Floyd by a policeman in Minneapolis in 2020, the subsequent reinvigoration of the Black Lives Matter movement, the toppling of the statue of the infamous slaver Edward Colston in Bristol and the current war in Ukraine.
War and remembrance of conflict have, Seed explains, “become a real focal point” of his work.
He is, he continues, “increasingly interested in the [art] form of tragedy …”
“I know some [theatre] companies are embracing the idea that we all need a bit of joy just now,” he continues. “But I think we’re in a moment when tragedy has something very particular to offer.”
Seed is fascinated by the complex relationship between the subject of memorialisation and the modern world. Within a month of the death of George Floyd (in May 2020), Scotland witnessed both a flourishing of the Black Lives Matter movement (itself a memorialising movement) and a far-right backlash against it.
In the case of the latter, loyalist and fascist activists attacked anti-racists and refugees in George Square in Glasgow twice in one week. The pretext offered by the far-right activists was that they were protecting the cenotaph and the statues around the square.
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Plinth is not a direct address to this recent history, Seed tells me. However, he acknowledges, the 2020 events in Scotland are among many subjects that link to the show’s subject matter.
“You worry about making a theatre piece that’s about something happening in a particular moment,” he comments. “You worry that it will become old news in the two years that it takes to get the show made.”
However, this hasn’t been a problem with Plinth, he says. Ongoing world events, not least the terrible war in Ukraine, continue to make the piece feel timely.
It seems almost inevitable, given the show’s basis in ancient tragedy and its concerns with war and the memorialisation of war, that it would have an immediacy whenever and wherever it was performed.
“I’m interested to see what people make of it,” says the dramatist. “There are things that I’m expecting them to read into it, but the piece is really very broad.
“I think there will be things that people see in it that I haven’t considered yet. I’m intrigued about that.”
The breadth of Seed’s subject matter includes the metaphorical power of war memorials themselves. We might think of a plinth merely as a featureless platform that allows the statue to be put in a place where it can be seen.
However, that idea is problematised by the elevation of certain statues (such as British “war hero” Lord Horatio Nelson and controversial Scottish politician and lawyer Henry Dundas) high up on columns where they cannot be seen properly by the naked eye. The point of columns and plinths, Seed believes, is more symbolic than practical.
“One cannot be elevated,” he comments, “unless it’s on top of something else.” Statues, particularly those to “war heroes”, are, he believes, part of the process of defining national identity “in opposition” to other nations or peoples, who are themselves demonised.
This is an interesting observation in relation to Dundas (above). The historical controversy over the Scottish politician centres on his infamous amendment to the parliamentary bill that sought to abolish slavery.
However, less discussed is the fact that, as Secretary of State for War, he sent the British military to attempt, unsuccessfully, to suppress the great revolt of African slaves in what is now Haiti. This is the man so esteemed by the British establishment that his statue stands, not on a mere plinth, but atop a column that rises 150 feet in the air.
With Plinth, Seed seeks to connect people’s thoughts and feelings about such statues back to the ancient heroism of Theseus (the great, mythological figure who slew the bloodthirsty Minotaur). “The bottom line with any show is that you want it to be thrilling,” he says.
“I like words … but I’m pushing back against the primacy of the word,” he continues. “I’m looking at everything that theatre has to offer.”
Consequently, Seed explains, audiences can expect a work of wordless theatre that boasts, “big visuals and a very big soundtrack”. His objective with the piece is, he says, to create on stage “a total world that the audience can become enveloped in”.
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Although he hopes his show is stimulating at an intellectual level, his primary objective is, he enthuses, to offer audiences, “an experience of being taken to another place”. His ability to do that has been enhanced considerably, he tells me, by the work being co-produced by the internationally acclaimed Scottish theatre company Vanishing Point (VP).
VP’s support has been, “terrific and absolutely invaluable”, he says. The show – which is presented in partnership with Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock and Tramway, Glasgow – has its world premiere in Greenock next week.
The show is, Seed insists, “going to be the best-prepared premiere I’ve ever been able to offer”.
Plinth opens at the Beacon Arts Centre, Greenock on Thursday, October 12. It then tours Scotland until February 10, 2024: alseed.net
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