Exploding myths on stage

MEET Gyro Proon. He's the subject of John Harvey's play The Rise, Fall and Rise of Gyro Proon and he's going to be a rock-and-roll star. Picked up by a dodgy manager, he's thrust into the spotlight and seduced by the promise of 15 minutes of fame, eventually ditching the glamorous life to do the right thing by his girl, Daisy.

It's an upbeat contemporary fable but what makes it unusual is that it is performed by a 30-strong ensemble of actors with learning disabilities from Lung Ha's Theatre Company, currently celebrating its 15th anniversary.

While the play looks in a lateral way at the notion of image taking precedent over integrity, the fact that it does not once address the issues surrounding its cast speaks volumes about the approach of this pioneering Edinburgh theatre company.

Lung Ha's was set up in 1984 by directors Pete Clerke and Richard Vallis for a one-off show, Lung Ha's Monkey. The aim was to show off the performers' talents and to bridge the gap between large-scale community drama and professional mainstream theatre.

Out of this came a desire to continue the project, and Lung Ha's has produced a self-devised, large-scale show every year since. More recently, smaller projects have toured festivals abroad.

"The real priority for Lung Ha's is and always has been about producing high-quality theatre on any level," says Clerke, taking time out from Gyro Proon rehearsals. "We didn't know that the company was going to continue until the last night of that very first show, and that will has continued."

Clerke directed the first two Lung Ha's shows and has now brought the company full circle as he returns to work on Gyro Proon. The lack of an artistic director is another unique factor in the company. It is a conscious decision, freeing the company in terms of style and approach.

John Mitchell, the founder of Oxygen House Theatre Co, spent three years with Lung Ha's. He describes this time as "the most creative I'd had since Oxygen House. Because I had input from the ground up, it was very fulfilling and allowed me to create with the company a real sense of fantastical theatre."

Neither Mitchell nor Clerke had worked with actors with learning disabilities prior to Lung Ha's, and both acknowledge an initial apprehension. "The major difficulty you have to come to terms with," says Clerke, "is that of how much text people can cope with, which is all about the retention of information. There are some members in the company who can't speak at all, so we're always looking to making things as visual as possible."

With this in mind, the company has incorporated video into the new show - a natural enough medium for a work concerning the ups and downs of pop-star life. Even with this emphasis on the visual, there are other differences that need to be taken into account.

"There's a difference in the way of working," according to Clerke, "because we only rehearse one evening a week and have been developing the play in this way since April, making for a much more gradual process than there would normally be."

Some cynics might suggest that the whole premise upon which Lung Ha's is founded - that of self-determination through creativity - is a completely bogus one and that more than a hint of opportunism is involved in exploiting both the company members and an indulgent public. It's a claim naturally rejected by Clerke, who points out some of Lung Ha's success stories. Graham Thompson, who has been with the company since its early days, is completing a four-year drama course at Edinburgh's Telford College, while both Gyro Proon cast members David Brown and Kay Jacobs (a Lung Ha's regular) have featured in short TVdramas for the BBC.

"I can understand people's perception," Mitchell concedes. "But it quite honestly isn't the case with Lung Ha's. There's a seriousness of intent going on that counters any of the criticisms levelled at it."

Mitchell now sits on Lung Ha's management board and will be returning to direct a new show for the company next year. Clerke says: "The company's had 15 years at it now and, while the shows have become more sophisticated, we're still not directly connected with doing issue-based work, but are more concerned with exploding myths."

The Rise, Fall and Rise of Gyro Proon, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, Nov 5-7, 8pm. Tickets #7 (#3.50). Box office: 0131-228- 1404

Copyright 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.