Behaviour 2012: Behave Yourself

Having extended its season from a fortnight to around eight weeks, and with a more leisurely programme of events, The Arches' Behaviour Festival has reinvented itself as a broad survey of performance's more experimental trends. March saw activist and National Theatre of Scotland collaborator Robert Softley bring his intimate and personal If These Spasms Could Speak and the Fringe favourite The Oh Fuck Moment; April continues to promote both national and local performers looking to challenge old school notions of theatre.

The diversity of the programme reflects not only artistic director Jackie Wylie's vision of performance, but the range of approaches performance now embraces. Stef Smith might be best known as the author of Roadkill, the stunning study of sexual exploitation, but her entry, The Silence of Bees, gets site specific and sensually smelly in Sauchiehall Street's branch of Lush; Gary Gardner moves on from his early Arches Live! deconstruction of Santa to have a pop at Thatcher's Children. Nic Green, lauded for her contemporary feminist Trilogy checks out her sense of home – caught between Scottishness and Englishness, she delves into her Fatherland/Motherland; and for cheapskates there's the chance of a free haircut from Mammalian Diving Reflex. 

It's difficult to fix on a single theme to connect the works: Fish and Game's Cycling Gymkhana and Green's entry have a feminist intention: Thatcher's Children and White Rabbit, Red Rabbit are political. Bryony Kimmings gives it the old pissed up, anarchic artist energy, while Collecting Fireworks meditates on the memory's habit of imbuing meaning to the past and transforming it. And although the Edinburgh Fringe is an important resource for the programming – the Brick Award is handed to two pieces from the annual August jamboree, and Kimmings established her name there back in 2010 – Behaviour is more focussed in its remit, finding the sweet spot between experimentation and accessibility. 

Collecting Fireworks (Inbetween Time Productions)

If the titular fireworks are the collected memories in this installation, they don't so much explode brilliantly as burn intensely. After a debut at 2011's Edinburgh Fringe, where it provided a respite from the relentless push of flyer and showtime, Collecting Fireworks is perfect for the suggestive, mysterious atmosphere of The Arches. A darkened room, illuminated by a series of light bulbs that switch on and off to illuminate the recorded recollections, Fireworks rescues recollections of performance and invites a new audience to reflect on their experience in the theatre. 

Ideal for a festival as frenetic as Behaviour, Collecting Fireworks is on the more reflective end of the performance spectrum. Stripping away the externals of theatre – cast, script, stage and event – it focuses on the impact left on the audience. Recorded memories are played back, inviting the listener to share another's experience and ponder their own memories. And while the individual speakers may be anonymous, the way that their memories have shaped them is apparent: this gentle addition to the festival puts the interaction between the audience and performer into a broader context – and can act as a retreat from the vitality of the artists' expression of their visions.

Inconsistent Whisper (Torsten Lauschmann and Red Note Ensemble)

"Torsten Lauschmann really gets it," says Red Note's John Harris. "We have worked with him before – at a gig at the Traverse theatre and he is always brilliant – and always funny."

Red Note's recent adventures into theatre could be described in the same way. In April, they will also be rocking the Traverse again with Pass the Spoon and their own repertoire now includes collaborations with bhangra percussionists and a musical setting of A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, a poem that has a sharp take on Scottish identity.

Harris explains that Red Note's eclecticism is the product of simply "doing stuff that interests us. Inconsistent Whisper is a short performance that involves Chinese whispers between the participants: members of Red Note, players who have developed their musicality outwith formal training and some household appliances." On one level, it's a study of communication and miscommunication. However, Red Note and Lauschmann's wry humour is not excluded, and this is less a dry academic musical discourse than an immediate, playful mash up of improvisation and composition.

Lauschmann recently owned Tramway's mainspace and the GFT with a film show that immersed an entire venue with flickering, emotive imagery. Inconsistent Whisper follows this with a sound plan.

Beats (Kieran Hurley)

It may be slightly hard to believe in this current pick ‘n’ mix musical climate, with instantly downloadable playlists full of a finely-honed sense of irony (Grimes and Eye Of The Tiger can happily co-exist for some) but rave culture in Britain in the mid-80s to mid-90s was a genuinely subversive scene – a real leveller with a punk spirit which threatened a Tory government who knew it could not be contained; so much so that a law was put into place – the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, Section 63-67 Part V of 1994, banning the playing of 'repetitive beats' in public spaces, thus defining anyone involved within it as 'anti-social'.

Kieran Hurley, himself no stranger to political dissonance, has created alongside resident Arches DJ Johnny Whoop a moving account of coming of age amid the heady days of techno’s second wave. Forget Irvine Welsh’s often morally dubious storylines – Beats has more heart and soul and a disarming, life-affirming honesty about virgin pill-popping and beautiful tunes by Aphex Twin and Autechre, evoking the hedonism of the mid-90s.

Premiered at Arches Live! as a work in development, Beats displayed likable, recognisable characters, great comic timing and a thoughtful, sensitive tone throughout, meditating on what it means to be young and disenfranchised... and Beats is for anyone who has ever fought to live and dress as they so desire and do what they want, in the face of resistance.

Brick Award: White Rabbit, Red Rabbit (Nassim Soleimanpour)

As irritating as British politics can be, its censorious hand rarely prevents artists from leaving the country. In Iran, however, author Nassim Soleimanpour is stuck at home by official fiat. In response, he writes plays that dispense with the need for rehearsal, director and the rest of the theatrical apparatus. WRRR has a different actor at every performance – one who has never even seen the script before. 

The inability of the writer to attend performances of his own play – especially as it is now an international success – lends every performance a melancholy and a reminder of how plays can be political simply by existing. Each show is unique, while repeating a fundamental act of resistance: the government may try to stop the artist moving, but it cannot contain the art.