Matt Boothman

Battersea Arts Centre’s Scratch nights have always been about risk-taking and experimentation, and with Freshly Scratched – one of the two parallel programmes in this year’s Scratch Festival – the venue’s staff are taking almost as big a risk as the audiences and performers.

The scratches – ten-minute conceptual pieces and works in progress – that comprise Freshly Scratched have been selected purely on the basis of written applications. So though the event’s curators presumably have some inkling of the sort of thing in store, when it comes to opening night they’re in the same boat as the public: experiencing the acts for the first time. What little foreknowledge they have is offset by the greater risk they’re taking; while the audience risks just £5 each on the unknown quality of the acts, the organisers stake their reputations as judges of artistic quality.

On the festival’s first long weekend we’re treated to a wordless bromance enacted between two skinny white men with moustaches, tethered by guy ropes to opposite ends of a ridgepole tent; the surprisingly gripping spectacle of most of a tin of treacle dripping slowly down the trembling back of a naked man; a group of people narrating their losing battle with gravity; and to fellow audience members forced to abandon their roles as passive spectators and physically ward off a performer’s intimate advances.

It’s exhilarating to see the curator stand up following a performance and exhibit the same breathless uncertainty the audience is feeling. Because the BAC’s staff lead by example and don’t leave all the risk-taking up to the artists, the BAC becomes an environment in which risk-taking is the norm, and acts must push more boundaries than anywhere else in order to appear more than usually innovative.

And this is only the first round of this year’s Freshly Scratched: while these scratches are themed around Reasons for Living, the next two weeks will feature acts inspired by Democracy and by David Lynch. So it isn’t too late to share that opening night sensawunda with the people who make it all possible.

Not only that, but the Festival also incorporates the Graduates Festival strand, showcasing an assortment of talent hand-picked from the graduating classes of experimental theatre courses nationwide – including a live video installation in the bar, the chance to communicate with yourself in the year 2014, and a particularly intense and exhilarating example of audio-directed performance. I challenge anyone to find a similar volume of similarly brave art for £5 a ticket.

Preparations have officially begun for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2009. Accommodation for August is already becoming scarce, the Fringe Society is taking submissions for the 2009 Programme, and companies are hard at work writing, rehearsing and road-testing brand new work.

The Forest Fringe – a studio space in an abandoned church, supported by Battersea Arts Centre – was a popular venue at the Fringe 2008. The Forest Fringe at the BAC weekend (27-28 March) showcased some of the best work from last year and previewed some exciting work in progress planned for 2009.

2008 highlights included Tip of Your Tongue, director Abigail Conway’s PostSecret -style anonymous truth-telling ritual, in which participants read and then eat unspoken truths written by others on rice-paper; and Lucy Ellinson’s Eulogy, In State. Ellinson’s piece, staged in a dusty corridor under the BAC’s main staircase, required the audience to help construct a eulogy for Ellinson before holding a vigil over her ‘dead’ body.

Looking ahead to this coming August, Bootworks had taken over a corner of the foyer with their Black Box, a short performance installation intended for a single audience member. In fact – probably intentionally – Black Box proved as entertaining for those outside the box as for the lone observer seated inside. While the silent-movie narrative could only be decoded from inside, only from outside was it possible to appreciate the company’s feats of timing and physical illusion.

In the Committee Room, Tinned Fingers created a cosy, playful world of animal stories, adapted drama games and arbitrary popularity-contest morality, in Our Father’s Ears. An ample supply of wine and the friendly atmosphere ensured the audience were happy to take part.

For just 15 lucky participants per night, Rotozaza were testing out their new ‘autoteatro’ experience, GuruGuru. Autoteatro blurs, erases and redraws the line between audience and performer by feeding prerecorded lines and instructions to participants via headphones, creating a prepackaged performance that changes with every iteration while requiring no regular actors. It’s a form of theatre that would be impossible to conceive without modern technology.

The Festival Fringe is a space for experimentation. Fringe audiences not only accept, but expect deviation from convention. From the looks of its 2009 line-up so far, the Forest Fringe is set to challenge every convention in sight, from the role of the audience right up to what we can comfortably classify as theatre.