Status or The Silken Tent

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Hi. I’ve not written in a while – been too busy, been too stressed. But Status felt like a return to somewhere bright and airy I haven’t been in a while and it made me want to talk about it. Because it’s a really incredible piece of work, though not in exactly the way I expected.

It’s made by Chris Thorpe and is broadly about a guy called Chris and the story of the impact of Brexit on the way he feels about his status as a British (or more specifically English) person. It’s a really thrilling piece of storytelling, captivating without working too hard, and very much being on its own terms. It goes to strange places, travelling across the world and back again, pulling the mind through space with you, without seeming to finely pin down exactly the where of the places. Everywhere seems slightly like a version of a place you might have read rather than seen, or rather seen in postcards but never visited.

There’s a projection of lines that run across a screen, sometimes they feel like lines on a map, sometimes like mountains drawn in space, sometimes they are neon strips, sometimes the horizon, sometimes they look like the strings of a guitar but none of these are done in such a way as to make you think “well, that’s that”.

All of it is I guess the sort of wide-ranging potentially aimless work that I love Chris Thorpe for: what-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-be-thinking theatre that is never going to let you off the hook and just sit back and assume that it’s what you think it is. I suppose mercurial is maybe the word for that. Though, also sort of not.

But there’s also music in the show. Bits where Chris just sort of sings songs with an electric guitar about how he feels about Brexit and maps and England and pulling England out of himself and himself out of England, about wanting to be no longer of the place that you are of but being aware that that is exactly the privilege that makes you of. Because we do not like the Englishness of Nigel Farage, we do not get to no longer be English.

And what the music does is makes you feel rather than think. This is a feelings show rather than a thought one. Obviously, the best shows are think and feel but I think what the music does here is to give you space to really plunge into the feeling of it, to feel with the room in a place that is not quite conscious, that is bodily and deep – which is a real feat. It reminded me of my favourite moments in Ponyboy vs. and in Three Sisters and then in [insert slogan here], which I actually saw after but think has resonances.

I mean, of course I like it. I love Chris Thorpe. But I loved the seriousness of Status – there are jokes, but it's quite a joke-free thing, which is weird, particularly at the Fringe and I guess that made it feel like theatre that takes theatre seriously; seriously in the way they talk about theatre in The Writer, like the Greeks screaming and wailing and resolving the world. This feels like that kind of work. 

I was also struck by the fact that Chris Thorpe is a fucking great performer. Startlingly good. Like, I really like all the kids mucking about with their thoughts at the Fringe – they are all really trying and some of them are so laudable and good – but he’s just at another level. He’s fucking smart and fucking good at holding an audience and fucking brilliant and knowing how to use rhythm to lead an audience without feeling the force of the following. 

Which makes me think about The Silken Tent, which in turn makes me think about nationhood and personhood, and I think I’ll just leave you with that: maybe you can think about that too and see whether The Silken Tent is about nationhood after all, because I guess just like Status I’m not sure I understood exactly all the things it is attaching itself to in my brain but I think it’s such a remarkable object:

She is as in a field a silken tent 
At midday when the sunny summer breeze 
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent, 
So that in guys it gently sways at ease, 
And its supporting central cedar pole, 
That is its pinnacle to heavenward 
And signifies the sureness of the soul, 
Seems to owe naught to any single cord, 
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound 
By countless silken ties of love and thought 
To every thing on earth the compass round, 
And only by one's going slightly taut 
In the capriciousness of summer air 
Is of the slightlest bondage made aware.

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