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The year of living dangerously
Summer glut, winter drought - that's the traditional cycle for arts jamborees. Michael Billington on the festival that plans to just keep on going
Festivals are one of the big post-war growth industries. Scarcely a week goes by without an arts bonanza popping up somewhere. The European Festivals Association publishes a booklet listing no less than 88 of them, from Amsterdam to Zurich. And that hardly begins to cover the specialist opera, music, theatre, film and literary festivals that erupt throughout the continent and indeed the planet.
It would be a dull world without festivals. But there are many that start as a celebration and carry on as an institution. Edinburgh, in particular, faces a real problem in that the still-vibrant international festival is increasingly swamped, in media terms, by the fringe: a bulging hypermarket where a few precious gems are surrounded by a mass of tat. My one visit to the Cannes film festival proved to me just how many bad movies are produced each year, reminding me of John Osborne's phrase about "an effluent of celluloid".
Too many festivals are resurrected simply out of habit: good ones constantly redefine themselves. Adelaide - my own favourite - reinvents itself by biennially importing a new director. Under Peter Sellars in 2002 it will feature only Australian work. In London the Proms, formerly under John Drummond and now under Nicholas Kenyon, constantly expand musically and geographically.
But one of the best examples of adaptation to changing circumstances is the London International Festival of Theatre. Started in 1981 by two idealists fresh out of university, Lucy Neal and Rose Fenton, Lift is now set to break the mould. After a month-long fiesta starting on June 11, it will drop the idea of biennial events in favour of year-round activity.
"We both found," says Fenton, "that we were beginning to service the institution rather than our ideas about art and artists. The festival became a restricting factor as opposed to a liberating frame. Also, the landscape has changed. Twenty years ago there was practically no international work visiting Britain: now there's the Barbican Bite season and a whole host of events.
"Juggling the finances also became difficult. A decade ago big international companies, such as the Maly Theatre of St Petersburg, would happily travel as the icing on the cake; now they tour all the time. So we decided to redefine every single word that makes up our title, not least the word 'festival'."
Lucy Neal stresses that Lift has evolved over the past 20 years; that part of its mission has always been to broaden the range of possibilities by balancing imported ensembles with site-specific work, visual theatre and international collaborations. "This year," she says, "we've got Declan Donnellan's Boris Godunov and the return of the Castellucci company, who caused a stir with Giulio Cesare. But we're also bringing over a Hungarian director, Laszlo Hudi, whose work is totally unknown here.
"We're trying to blur the boundary between professional and nonprofessional theatre-makers: Heiner Goebbels, for example, is a top international talent who has been working with a group of young London musicians to provide a new piece of improvised music. It's that here-and-there perspective we're interested in."
But this year's Lift - which includes pyrotechnics in Hackney's Victoria Park from the creator of Paris's Millennium Eve fireworks, and stories of occupied life from Palestine's Al-Kasaba Theatre at the Royal Court - will be the last of its current kind. "60% of our audience," says Fenton, "only go to one event; they're not treating it as a festival. So we thought it would be much better to develop a relationship with our audience over 12 months and ask some navigating questions. What is theatre actually for? Is it pointless or does it have a transforming energy? How many different cultures co-exist in London? What is their relationship with their countries of origin? And how do we make connections between London and the rest of the world? It is this constant questioning that will set us apart from other producers."
This strikes me as a rare example of a festival acknowledging that times change; that the old idea of the blockbuster season or orgasmic explosion needs to be accompanied - even replaced - by continuous exploration. Over the next year Lift will be importing The Theft of Sita, a collaboration between our own Nigel Jamieson and artists from Indonesia and Bali, plus New York's Wooster Group who will do a four-week season at the Old Vic. They'll also bring back the old people's chorus-group, Young at Heart, who will tell the story of the French revolution through the songs of Frank Sinatra and the Rolling Stones. But Neal and Fenton have other idea-led projects in mind, including a season about childhood and a teachers' forum to explore ways of renewing creativity in the classroom.
Obviously there is still room for theatrical imports, but increasingly one looks for seasons built around a sustaining idea rather than job-lot bonanzas based on international shopping. Concurrent with Lift - but very much in harmony with it - is East Goes West, a three-play season at London's Gate Theatre presented by Philippe le Moine. Four Bulgarian and two British actors will combine on Heiner Müller's The Battle. Nine young performers from Novi Sad - the first target of Nato bombers in 1999 - will present a textless piece called The End of the 20th Century. And Paradise Tomorrow from Skopje, Macedonia, is set in Pristina during the Kosovo crisis; it brings together a group of Albanian actors.
"All three shows," says le Moine, "are stylistically different: they variously use music, improvisation and visual images. But they all raise questions about the responsibility of the individual in times of crisis and tie in with the season director Erica Whyman has just done at the Gate on liberty. They also break down our stereotypical image of the Balkans and show the region not simply as a source of conflict but as one of endless creativity."
Between them, Lift and the Gate's East Goes West season redefine our notion of what festivals can be. Both involve workshops, meetings, collaborations with local artists. Both also get away from the old idea of a festival in which, once the visitors have departed, there is the same feeling of spiritual flatness as when the circus leaves town. Glamorous and exotic imports are all very well, but if a festival doesn't contribute something to the ongoing life of the artistic community then it is just a glittering cul-de-sac.
The word "festival" itself derives from feast-day. But if the annual banquet is followed by starvation, isn't it all an expensive waste?
• Lift is at various London venues from June 11 to July 8. Details: 020-7863 8017. East Goes West is at the Gate Theatre, London W11 (020-7229 0706), from June 19 to July 14.