Live Bed Show

For more years that he might care to remember, Ian Smith has been the acceptable face of Live Art: as host of the National Review of Live Art and Artistic Director of Mischief La-Bas, he has been a highly visible and humorous conspirator in all manner of happenings and left-field events. In a rare excursion to the Fringe, Smith has roped in Brian Hartley for a couple of typically funny and thought-provoking pieces.

 

If Live Art has the unfortunate reputation of being deathly serious (and an acquired taste), Smith encourages a friendlier, more accessible approach. “Using humour acts as ‘a wink’, an acknowledgement to the punter that everything’s OK, I know what I’m doing, and you’re more than welcome to come on in and investigate,” he explains. “Once that trust has been established, we can go anywhere together, even the dark places.”

 

Moving Stories for Bedtime places Smith in his bed, asking members of the audience to read fragments of his secret memories, while Brian Hartley responds. In Beastly Beauty, Hartley takes the role of a dead matador, whom Smith will drag around the Grassmarket, while dressed as a bull.

 

Unfortunately for Hartley, this is not his first indignity at the hands of Smith. “Brian is a very well respected artist who often works in physical performance and dance, but we have only recently actually crossed paths in collaboration.” This was during Mischief La-Bas’ ambitious Peeping at Bosch, which travelled through the Eden, Heaven and Hell depicted in The Garden of Earthly Delights. “For my sins, I first asked him to be suspended in a large medieval bell which punters were delighted to hammer for hours on end while his legs kicked about in agony, then gave him road rash dragging him through gravel by his ankles, and now suggest he performs in a toilet while I lay in bed watching him.”

 

Beyond inflicting pain and humiliation on his “very generous and delightful ally,” – Smith admits that “I dread to think what he might come up with should he ever wish to turn the tables on me in one of his own projects” – Moving Stories forms part of Smith’s ongoing celebration of his first half-century. “The crucial thing is that this is not a Mischief gig, it’s a ‘little ’ole me and a pal’ gig - one of several in my 50th year that reflect on my current position.” Inevitably, Smith has ended up with some surreal images. “So far, I’ve wandered about singing inappropriate pop songs with a barrel-organ and a monkey (The Hurty Gurty Man) and dragged a dead matador through the park dressed as a kind of cigar chomping Bull. Poetically personal images.”

 

As always, Smith is searching for something deeper behind the comedy: the same qualities that he looks for in other work. “It should hopefully feel quite intimate, vulnerable and dreamy, but the whole essence will be lost if my writing is not absolutely honest.” As is fitting for a man who wants to reflect on his past, he is attempting not to dramatise his history, but present something unvarnished and evocative. “I intend to really try and summon up memories rather than anecdotes, with all their vagueness and magic and confusion intact. I’m hoping that is entertaining in itself, but more importantly it might spark some intimate reverie within the punters too.”

 

Dance Base has certainly achieved a coup by persuading Smith to make the trip across from the West Coast during August. While he has appeared at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, he is not a frequent Fringe dweller.

 

“Actually, it’s a shock to be there at all. I’ve resisted the Fringe like the plague, as I see it as a cesspit of venality, and as Mischief work traditionally needs to be free at the point of contact, there was no apparent context.” Somehow, he was coaxed across, not least by the presence of other Scottish artists.

 

 

“I was approached with a left of field suggestion from Dance Base, which I realised was an invitation to experiment as an artist, rather than an offer to throw vast sums of money down the tubes on venue hire.” Put on the spot, Smith had to step up. “As I bemoaned the fact that there seemed little context for individual experimentation or freedom, I realised I couldn’t refuse their offer to do exactly that. It helped that I’m in very good company, with Alex Rigg and Lindsay John also testing work, so that gives me confidence.” This doesn’t mean he’ll be seen at the parties and after-shows, though. “As far as seeing other stuff, I actually find the whole thing daunting, but then again, remember I’m 50.”

 

Despite his age, Ian Smith is still going strong, provoking and amusing and developing a distinct style that seems to be equal parts Sid James, Duchamp, David Bowie, Max Wall and Samuel Beckett. It seems that he will be still be going in another fifty years. “To be honest I’ve been doing the personal nonsense far longer than anything else, ever since I fitted myself up with a very painful yoke and buckets full of adrenaline way back in 1978. It don’t seem to have run out.”