theartsdesk in Brighton: At the Festival Where Anything Goes

Persecuted Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi may be this year’s guest director, provoking a loose theme of "freedom of expression, liberty, and the power of the individual voice" that’s all the more powerful for her enforced absence. But a week in to the 2011 Brighton Festival and Brighton Festival Fringe, I’d say it’s the stewards who are this year’s under-sung heroes and heroines. As the craze for interactive performance burgeons, the tricky task is falling to them of reassuring wary audiences without giving the creative game away. Would there be room for a rucksack in Small Space? Would the Minotaur-themed edible narrative be suitable for vegetarians? And what would happen if the polite woman with the nervous laugh decided she’d rather not touch the performer of An Appreciation’s genitals? (She did, in the end, but more of that later…)

Persecuted Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi may be this year’s guest director, provoking a loose theme of "freedom of expression, liberty, and the power of the individual voice" that’s all the more powerful for her enforced absence. But a week in to the 2011 Brighton Festival and Brighton Festival Fringe, I’d say it’s the stewards who are this year’s under-sung heroes and heroines. As the craze for interactive performance burgeons, the tricky task is falling to them of reassuring wary audiences without giving the creative game away. Would there be room for a rucksack in Small Space? Would the Minotaur-themed edible narrative be suitable for vegetarians? And what would happen if the polite woman with the nervous laugh decided she’d rather not touch the performer of An Appreciation’s genitals? (She did, in the end, but more of that later…)