Downing Street or Help! David Cameron likes my art.
Summary
A script for a 60 min long play, that has been coproduced with writer John Moseley and journalist Titus Kroder responding to the dilemma, when art is co-opted as radical chic.
Supported by
British Columbia Arts Council and the City of Vancouver, The Elephant Trust London, The Showroom London
Description of project
Downing St. or Help! David Cameron Likes My Art is a play script, using, as a starting point, a real circumstance: Eva Weinmayr's work Today Questions from the UK Government Art Collection was chosen by David and Samantha Cameron for their private residence at Downing St. when they first moved in.
Weinmayr’s attempt to contact The Prime Minister and his wife to discuss this was ignored, so she, in collaboration with writer John Moseley and journalist Titus Kroder, scripted the meeting that had been denied.
The play imagines that the Camerons invite the Eva Weinmayr to visit them and while the artist Eva has tea with Samantha Cameron a rather unexpected set of events starts to unfold. The play acts as a catalyst for debate: The audience, which is scripted as a persona in the play, repeatedly interrupts the narrative in order to suggest a different strategy how to resolve Eva's dilemma.
In various readings in private and public venues, such as a theatre festival, a pub, a friend’s living room, as well as a broadcast on Twitter and staged performance the script has been brought to life in different contexts.
It has been reviewed in Art Monthly (May 2015) by David Barret and Backseatmafia (April 2015) by Ilia Rogatchevski, and included in: Theatre of the Unimpressed — In Search of Vital Drama, by Jordan Tannahill, Coachhouse Books, Toronto (2015)
Description of work included
Poster, drawing by Rosalie Schweiker
Reading at Edinburgh Fringe(2014)
Performance at The Showroom (2015) photograph Olga Koroleva
Review on Backstreet Mafia, April 2015 (see link below)
Review Art Monthly, May 2015
Type of work
Book, reading, staged performance, twitter broadcast
Published in
New Documents, Los Angeles (artist book), The Showroom London (A Sketch of a Performance with 7 Actors and the Audience), Forest Fringe (Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Queen Mary University (Queen Mary Theatre Company), at a friend’s living room and Rochester Castle London (Wetherspoons Pub), Twitter
Link to web site
https://new-documents.org/books/downing-street
http://www.forestfringe.co.uk/edinburgh2014/artist/eva-weinmayr/
http://www.theshowroom.org/events/downing-street
http://www.backseatmafia.com/2015/04/14/theatre-review-eva-weinmayrs-downing-street-at-the-showroom-london/
Other description
Downing Street, book, published by New Documents, edited by Jeff Khonsary, designed by The Future, ISBN: 978-1-927354-15-5, distributed by Motto Berlin
Sketch of a performance with seven actors and the audience — The Showroom London (15 March 2015)
Directed by Hester Chillingworth (GETINTHEBACKOFTHE VAN)
Actors: Catherine Bailey, Jennifer Pick, Neil Bromley, Craig Hamblyn, Lucy McCormick, Minna-Triin Kohv, Paul Hughes
Death in Downing Street — Edinburgh Fringe Festival (14 August 2014) produced by Andy Fields (Forest Fringe)
Actors: Ed Rapley, Deborah Pearson, Ellie Stamp, Thomas Martin, Richard DeDomenici, Sammy Metcalfe, Anthony Roberts, Ira Solano
Help! David Cameron Likes My Art — Queen Mary Theatre Company London, produced by Aidan Peppin and Gemma Catherine Turnbull
with thanks to Julia Bardsley, Maggie Inchley and Jen Harvey
Poster drawing by Rosalie Schweiker
Date
2015-03Creator
Weinmayr, Eva
Keywords
Dilemma
Agitprop theatre
Performativity
Insistence
Tactical suicide
David and Samantha Cameron
Spectatorship
Cooption
Art and politics
Collaborative writing
Contextual publishing
Publication type
artistic work
Language
eng