This year's guest director of the Brighton Festival, Aung San Suu Kyi, finds inspiration in Beethoven
By PAUL LEVY
The Brighton Festival, which this year runs from tomorrow to May 29, has a tradition of having a guest director. In 2009 it was the visual artist Anish Kapoor, and in 2010, the musician Brian Eno. But this year the Festival (www.brightonfestival.org) has staged its own coup by getting the agreement of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi to be its guest artistic director.Getty Images
Aung San Suu Kyi
Released only last November from house arrest in Myanmar, where she's been confined for 15 of the past 21 years, Ms. Suu Kyi has become an international symbol of peaceful resistance to political tyranny. (Her "crime" was that her party, the National League for Democracy, won 81% of the parliamentary seats, and 59% of the popular vote in the 1990 Burmese general election; the ruling military junta refused to recognize the results and imposed house arrest upon her.)
Released only last November from house arrest in Myanmar, where she's been confined for 15 of the past 21 years, Ms. Suu Kyi has become an international symbol of peaceful resistance to political tyranny. (Her "crime" was that her party, the National League for Democracy, won 81% of the parliamentary seats, and 59% of the popular vote in the 1990 Burmese general election; the ruling military junta refused to recognize the results and imposed house arrest upon her.)
Brighton Festival
'Circa' is one of the circus shows included in the Brighton Festival program.
Fidelio, of course, has special resonance for Ms. Suu Kyi, as her own steadfastness mirrors that of Beethoven's heroine, Leonore (to be sung by the wonderful Janice Watson). The former political prisoner told Mr. Comben that for many people Beethoven represents "not just the greatness of music but the greatness of thought behind the music; and I've often wished, in these last few years under detention, that I were a composer, because then I would be able to express what I felt through music, which is somehow so much more universal th"Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion," Ms. Suu Kyi is quoted saying in the festival brochure, "cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power." To honor these sentiments, the final event of the festival May 29 is the Freedom Picnic, "Anniversary—an act of memory at 3pm," which is to be a recitation from memory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948. Artist Monica Ross and her co-recitors, more than 250 people who have memorized and recited articles in 30 languages in 30 recitations in England, Germany and Ireland, will become "a collective embodiment" of the Declaration, "transforming it into a riveting and poetic act of performance and witness," according to the festival brochure.
Fidelio, of course, has special resonance for Ms. Suu Kyi, as her own steadfastness mirrors that of Beethoven's heroine, Leonore (to be sung by the wonderful Janice Watson). The former political prisoner told Mr. Comben that for many people Beethoven represents "not just the greatness of music but the greatness of thought behind the music; and I've often wished, in these last few years under detention, that I were a composer, because then I would be able to express what I felt through music, which is somehow so much more universal th"Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion," Ms. Suu Kyi is quoted saying in the festival brochure, "cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power." To honor these sentiments, the final event of the festival May 29 is the Freedom Picnic, "Anniversary—an act of memory at 3pm," which is to be a recitation from memory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948. Artist Monica Ross and her co-recitors, more than 250 people who have memorized and recited articles in 30 languages in 30 recitations in England, Germany and Ireland, will become "a collective embodiment" of the Declaration, "transforming it into a riveting and poetic act of performance and witness," according to the festival brochure.
Brighton Festival
Artist Monica Ross and Universal Declaration of Human Rights 'Anniversary—an act of memory at 3pm.'
On May 21, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaks on "Article 19." Not surprisingly, this event, dealing with freedom of information and the right to know, is returns only. But there are still tickets that day for "Playing with Fire," playwright Mark Ravenhill's New Writing South Lecture; and at 5.30 p.m. for "Upsetting the Balance," a debate by on the boundaries and censorship of comedy, featuring a panel of figures from comedy, journalism and politics. They will discuss what, for example, "makes people tell tasteless gags about terrible disasters?"
There is a full program of musical and theater events, as well as visual arts, film, books, circus and dance, plus lots of activities for children. Contemporary and even pop music isn't overlooked—Ms. Suu Kyi told Mr. Comben that one of her sons, Alexander Aris, had "taught me to like" Bob Marley (and the Grateful Dead's "Standing on the Moon"). The avant-garde Belgian company led by Alan Platel, Les Ballets C de la B, performs the British première of "Gardenia" May 11; while there is another U.K. dance première May 18, "Apocrifu," by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
The Danish documentary portrait, "Aung San Suu Kyi: Lady of No Fear," tells a lot of Ms. Suu Kyi's personal history, and dwells on her time at Oxford, her marriage to Dr. Michael Aris and their domestic life in England, prior to her return to Rangoon in 1988, when she became committed to the pro-democracy movement and was placed under house arrest a year later. It will be screened May 16. Richard Shannon's celebrated 2009 play about Ms. Suu Kyi, "The Lady of Burma," has been updated and will be performed by Liana Gould, directed by Owen Lewis May 19 and 20.
Ms. Suu Kyi had a big hand in another bit of programming, again involving Beethoven (the Heath Quartet playing the Quartet in A minor, Op. 132) plus her favorite poet of her youth, T. S. Eliot—Stephen Dillane reading his "Four Quartets," directed by Katie Mitchell in a setting designed by Vicki Mortimer (May 14, returns only).
Ms. Suu Kyi told Mr. Comben, "While I was at Oxford I started reading T.S. Eliot's works, and I suppose I was struck by how different he was from the classical poets who were familiar to me from the time I was very small." And, she concluded, "it all comes back to the same thing, doesn't it? Freedom. Freedom of thought, freedom to face new things—one of the things freedom brings to us is the courage to try out new things, to face what you've never faced before, because you feel free—and freedom and courage go together."
Write to Paul Levy at wsje.weekend@wsj.com
