“You have to belt it out”

It’s the last half-hour of a gig. Bright lights bear down on you and huge walls of huge speakers are blaring. Your favourite band has its biggest hits stacked like planes coming in to land. Every song—however familiar—seems a surprise and every stranger seems a soulmate. You’re sweating. You’re hoarse. You’re euphoric. Now, tell me this: When does theatre ever match that? 

Honestly? All too rarely. Shakespeare’s no Springsteen and David Hare’s no Arcade Fire. Soliloquies just can’t rouse a crowd like a Jimmy Hendrix solo and no one ever bit the head off a bat onstage at the National.

“A lot of theatre just sits you down and shows you something,” says Jimmy Fairhhurst, artistic director of Not Too Tame, a company aiming to make theatre with the raucous, unpredictability energy of a gig. “A good gig gets rid of the rules. It empowers you as the audience and makes you feel free to join in and enjoy yourself.” 

Not Too Tame’s show Early Doors, set in a real working pub, has music acts and karaoke built in. They’re not the only ones borrowing the conventions of concerts. New writing company nabakov has pushed its writers to pen gigs in Symphony, while Beats North pairs Curious’s writers up with a DJ. Solo artists Molly Naylor and Ellie Stamp have picked up their guitars and the Paper Birds are working with a beatboxer, Grace Savage. Elsewhere, you’ll find song cycles, jam sessions and folk-offs in the theatre listings. 

This isn’t musical theatre or theatre with a live soundtrack. This is theatre as gig – or, if you prefer, gig as theatre. It’s about songs and direct address, set lists that tell stories—as concept albums do—and music that’s integral, never incidental. 

The form’s been on the rise in recent years. Fringe favourites Little Bulb, Fine Chisel and the Flanagan Collective all double up as bands, while Bryony Kimmings also gigs as her popstar alter ego Catherine Bennett. American ensembles The TEAM and Banana Bag and Bodice splice stories with songs, as have playwrights like Tim Price (I’m With the Band) and David Greig (The Events, Prudencia Hart).

It’s not entirely new, of course - Greig was making theatrical gigs with his Glasgow company Suspect Culture a decade ago. But the recent concurrence can’t be entirely coincidental either. So why are today’s theatremakers so inspired by gigs?

Partly, it’s about mining the riotous energy Fairhurst mentions above. “We finally get to be sexy and fun,” enthuses Ella Hickson, one of the writers on Symphony, “rather than boring old theatricals.”

In that, it fits into a wider thirst for theatre that’s active and experiential. Fairhurst agrees: Gig-theatre “acknowledges us as an audience,” he says, but it does so in a different way to immersive theatre. “Immersive theatre says ‘Come into our world and we’ll show you a story.’ This is about enjoying a night with us.” It’s a social thing, perfect for the Festival. After Early Doors, Not Too Tame keep the pub open. “Most people stay, because the evening’s ready to kick off. We’re the torchpaper that sets off the night.” Beats North culminates in a disco and Symphony wants its audience pint-in-hand. As Hickson says, “People just want to party, don’t they?” 

That’s shifted her writing style significantly, swapping “nice dramatic form, structure [and] dramatic rigour” for something more expansive and expressive. “You react with your body: you dance, you want to stamp your feet and feel things without having to think about them. As a writer, that’s huge.” It underpins everything, from the tone of her piece to its subject: “It’s an angsty love song, a big, chest-thumping, heart-bearting ode to London.”

The key difference, Hickson reckons, is that “you’re not in control as a writer.” Instead of a captive audience, politely paying attention, a gig gets passing trade and talkative pissheads. “Usually, you can play certain games with your audience: you can release information slowly to create tension or work with dramatic irony. Those things become useless. You’ve got to earn your audience and hold their attention.”

As such, says Molly Naylor, there’s no room for meekness or softly-softly self-deprecation: “You have to belt it out.” She’s taught herself the guitar for her new show, If Destroyed Still True, having previously used a backing band, The Middle Ones, in My Robot Heart. “I’m not very good, but I wanted the show to reflect that ideology with a bit of a punk spirit.” As with Symphony, the result is “slightly anarchic and a bit shambolic.”

“Sometimes you want perfection,” Naylor continues, “Sometimes you want to look at a Turner and go, ‘Fuck, that’s amazing.’ But sometimes you just want to watch some dickhead just doing their best. It can be really endearing.”

In that DIY attitude, you’ll find the seeds of a punk spirit; one that prioritises participation over perfection and guts over brains. 

There are two schools of thought on that. One points to access; what Hickson calls “this idea that you can broaden your catchment audience with a hybrid form.” It’s a line of argument that sees a gig as hipper, and possibly easier, than theatre. Naylor points to those “really cool friends who go to gigs, but still don’t go to theatre.” This, she adds, is a way of enticing them in. 

But maybe it’s more than that; maybe there’s a need for something raw and visceral at the moment, and theatre that makes some noise and gets you dancing is fulfilling it. Music’s always played a role in social upheaval, in the gap between the haves and the have-nots.

“There’s unrest,” Fairhurst pipes up. “A lot of people feel hard done by, so they’ll buy into that raucousness, that edge and that energy of attack. The reason punk was so big in the 70s was that it allowed people an outlet to express themselves. That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re not saying, ‘Sit there and watch.’ We want people to get involved.”

Get gigging

Symphony, Assembly George Square Gardens, 31 Jul – 25 Aug (not 11), 17.00

New plays from Ella Hickson, Nick Payne and Tom Wells inspired by gigs and stand-up comedy. “You can get your average 25-year-old into a gig much more easily than a piece of new writing,” says Hickson. 

Early Doors, Pleasance Pop-Up: The Pub, 30 Jul – 25 Aug (not 11, 19), 12.00

A celebration of all things pub from Not Too Tame. “We’ve lost the sense of communal event in this country,” argues director Jimmy Fairhurst. “That’s why festivals and concerts have got bigger. It’s the way forward for theatre.”

If Destroyed Still True, Forest Fringe, 6-17 Aug (not 11), 18.00

Spoken word artist Molly Naylor looks at teenagers and their bands. “If people want polish and technique, they’ll go to the opera or the ballet. There’s a place for that, but it’s not everything. Trying is good.”

Beats North, Summerhall @ Roundabout, 11- 23 Aug  (not 14, 21), 19.10

Luke Barnes and Ishy Din join forces with DJ Mariam Rezaei to hymn the music of Northern England. For Din, “music’s always played a role in social upheaval. It’s a great way of expressing that anger and frustration.”

Blind, Pleasance Courtyard, 17- 25 Aug, 13.55

Beatboxer Grace Savage joins forces with the Paper Birds for this autobiographical show. “Beatboxing isn’t just something teenage boys do in their bedrooms. It’s not all about pumping baselines. It’s also about delicacy, accessibility and feminity.”