Robert Sharples goes to see The Pitmen Painters at Leeds Grand Theatre.
I have been to the Theatre a few times now since moving to Leeds. I even somehow managed to be kindly invited to WYPlayhouse 21st Celebration, a performance of Rattigan’s Deep Blue Sea. I was of course blown away … my emotions fraught with having drunk champagne and bubbling memories of past relationship(s). This is what theatre can do. Flitter emotion, engage with you, relate to your stories, your culture and understanding of others. With you sat in the audience filling the gaps the writer, producer, directors, actors, etc have left you to fill.
Amongst all deliberation of ‘What is Culture?’ … What criteria and How do we constitute rating a city well or just not good enough … Theatre as a compadre of The Arts sits comfortable as definitively cultural. But equally considered relative to an agreement by many like-minded folk, a storm of elite thinkers and experts of opinion. Yet ultimately to you … the knowledge, experience and perception of an individual.
This time at the The Grand Theatre, I was responding to The Pitmen Painters written by English Playwright and Screenwriter Lee Hall (also Writer of Billy Elliot), taken from a book by William Feaver. I anticipated the thought for days and wondered what I would take from it. Much the same as when going to an Art Gallery, will I understand and enjoy it? How will it interact in the space? Will the curator persist the thinking of the Artist in what they both feel is an important taking from the work.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jan/24/pitmen-painters-national-theatre
Going to the theatre is just like going to a gallery, yes you have to sometimes work hard if you choose to but this is fine, it’s normally worth it whether you like ‘it’ or not. The Theatre is a pursuit, an appreciation, just like looking for a connection in a painting. Gazing into the art, poring over use of colour, the brush strokes, and thinking what questions is it asking? What is its meaning and what is the artist trying to communicate? is there any meaning in it at all?
To me, Lee Hall capably wrote through a group of Pitmen from 1930’s Ashington, a town North of Newcastle upon Tyne, some very strong, prevalent problems and thoughts of not just appreciating art aesthetically but whom should produce and appreciate politically. The Pitmen who had set-up an Art Appreciation Group, chipped in to hire a professor from London to profess the deeper worth and value in art. This soon became apparently difficult when they had no formal education of the historical ‘basics’. So the Professor, who tuned out to be simply an academic, instead orchestrates the Pitmen in becoming Artists themselves. The characters interpretively include the Artist-Gifted, the antagonist Marxist, the rigid Traditionalist, the ignorant impersonator, and the naive Cynic, who incidentally was peripheral and painted nothing.
It has an extremely warming delivery with humour and very clever, witty writing and I highly recommend it. What Lee Hall does is plainly conveys enough to understand a direct meaning but in a manner where more can be read between. In following the rise of fall, more strongly with the Artist-Gifted, it addresses not just the boundary between classes of Art Production looking to be challenged and broke, an Art where expression derive a freedom from a more liberated culture, but the misconstrued value of art within The Arts of then funded by patronage, valued by the bourgeoisie.
Oh, best not to forget the act of appreciation! Highly important …
Nowadays on visit to an exhibition, as opposed to a collection, you may say if you were trying: I’ve read the blurb, I’m trying to immerse into the historical and contemporary significance, it’s relative to the artist if it isn’t to me at least anyway. Yet, I have too often observed, and I generalise completely, many people expecting the work(s) to immediately connect to them. If it doesn’t, Why should I &/or even bother trying to understand the meaning to the art? Okay this may be unfair, but to quaintly compare Art often preferred, such as paintings, are historically productions for the rich and monarchical. As Pitmen Painter’s discusses.
You can misguide conversation at this point into the pits of synonymy and craftsmanship will most certainly crop up. Though Art should share some universal truth, it isn’t expected to be appreciated by everybody. The appreciation of Art is an Art itself and is figured for you to consider. I wish I could share how but I’m happy to understand it’s for me to appreciate and enjoy … is that not the point !! What’s interesting is The Pitmen Painter’s implore the possibilities that more people can and should be artists, to add meaning to those unspoken for. Overhearing such ‘this isn’t art …’ or ‘anyone can do that’, the most expressive response is clear, ‘… but you didn’t.’ To add, ‘everyone wants to be an artist’, it is incredibly difficult to sustain a living doing so and it’s really not easy. The odds are proliferate.
Despite it’s ridicule, to make a point I ask one question: Will Art ever be valued the same by everybody? The answer is evidentially no. Art, however you wish to look at it can be amongst all of us and widely valued than ever, isn’t this great how far it has come?! Pitmen Painter’s embraces this point in beginning to lay down a different value, not monetary but one of considerable meaning, making things possible that weren’t there before. With the Arts today being the Industry it is, what value is is a predicament. I feel trying to explore as a participant with the same sense of appreciation is insincere, and participating is the one sincere words of advice I wish to share.
I care little if you feel this to be sanctimonious; I have nothing to lose and am in this instance, pietas. Pitmen Painter’s is detectable theatre with which we can investigate modern culture. Regard the reality that the work of an Artist is consumed so lightly, challenged heavily, despite the extensible effort to communicate. All is asked is an attempt to contribute. Relate it back to a theatrical experience or a good book, participating in the pursuit to fill the gaps and lines between, letting yourself fall and feel the story of the Art is really half the joy of appreciating it.