CORPORATE SHENANIGANS

In the space of three years, theatrical group the Performance Corporation have earned a reputation for mischievously subversive, amped up theatrics. Peter Crawley looks in on rehearsals as the troupe prepare for their most off-the-wall piece yet: a modern retelling of the legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece

This may be the office of a powerful transnational corporation, but today is clearly not business as usual. The music certainly makes a difference: a tiptoeing jazz piece erupting later into gyrating electrofunk, then a pounding tribal rhythm where lunch trays smash together in combat. You may notice too that the staff - Jason, Medea, Miss Harpie, Hercules - have been culled from the myths of ancient Greece while Zeus above has apparently taken control of the intercom.

But this world is set vividly apart by a flurry of constant motion, where employees slink and dance along the length of a conveyor belt.

"Two loops. Ring ring. Basic phrase. Ring ring," instructs choreographer Nanette Kincaid from one side. From the other, director Jo Mangan calmly advises her cast not to panic. A general panic promptly breaks loose. It's just another day of rehearsals for the Performance Corporation, Dublin's wildly inventive theatre company.

Distant proposals for theatre shows are usually less reliable than prophecies divined from fresh entrails - and rarely as neat. So one year ago, when Jo Mangan said she wanted to work with a choreographer on a dance-theatre version of Jason and the Argonauts, set in a deserted office block late at night . . . well, you could afford to be sceptical. Next Friday The Yokohama Delegation opens as part of this year's Kilkenny Arts Festival. It is, indeed, a dance-theatre version of Jason and the Argonauts, set in a deserted office block late at night.

"Ah, I didn't do too bad then," says Mangan today, as her cast and crew get to grips with the consequences.

"We knew there'd be movement involved, but I don't think I understood quite how much," admits the performer and RTÉ broadcaster Carrie Crowley, fatigued but content. "I've never felt as stiff as I have over the last week and a half . . . but it's brilliant."

Nanette Kincaid admits that the dance routines may have pushed the performers to "the frazzled edge of life", but everyone here is an equal shareholder in the Performance Corporation. "It's real collaboration," says Kincaid, now on her third production with the company, "So you feel more strongly about the project."

This kind of company loyalty has been earned from the very beginning - three years ago - when the Performance Corporation made its irreverent and ingenious debut with an adaptation of Candide. Relentlessly entertaining and theatrically mischievous, the play launched a playful aesthetic of amped-up performance styles and wittily incorporated multi-media, leaping from hilariously crude flash animations to voice-over gags. From launching on the Dublin Fringe Festival to taking top honours at the ESB/Irish Times Theatre Awards, people couldn't find enough prizes to throw at the group.

Since then they have grown steadily more ambitious with each production, matching the moral instruction of St Thomas Aquinas to a satire on television culture; pitting high-voltage physical performance against snarling political theatre; devising an issue-based play for a community in Kenya; and concocting a Gothic audio-tour of medieval Kilkenny.

So, Jason finds a world somewhere between Ireland, Greece, America and Japan as he enters the Hibernian division of Yokohama's "personality repair" company in search of the success-boosting Golden Fleece patch, dodging the Sirens of the typing pool and a security-guard cyclops along the way. The dialogue carries the spark of screwball comedy and the shade of film noir. The story has the echo of ancient myth and the shadow of a sci-fi future. Even the oracle's prophecies have been smuggled into the fug of management jargon ("Be careful going forward Jason; the value of shares may fall as well as rise").

This is the best practice of the Performance Corporation: playing fast and loose with material and style, welcoming every contribution and pop cultural association.

"We just sat down and brainstormed to come up with these ideas," says author Tom Swift. "In a kind of way, they're almost like pub ideas you dream up, but they do make sense - well, to us anyway."

"I think we were really keen to create a world that doesn't exist," explains Jo Mangan. "So probably, of necessity, everything influences us. Once there was a draft of the script together, we sat down with everybody and let everybody go a bit mad.

"Hopefully the audience will come in and just get caught up in the magic and the craziness of it all. There'll be no time to go 'I wonder what that's about or where are they trying to locate that'. It's only afterwards that they will come to have a chat about it . . . "

"Or have to come to terms with it," interjects Swift drily. "I just liked the idea of Jason and the Argonauts," he considers, recognising that a quest story would nicely suit a fast-moving promenade performance. "But I was probably more influenced by the cheapo Harryhausen effects-driven 1960s film version than the original Greek myth. It's kind of cheesy and funny and you can laugh at it and there's lots of effects and tricks that we like to work with as well."

As for the company's sardonic streak, corporate culture with its "core competencies" and "social responsibilities" offers plenty of grist to their satirical mill. Not even the hero is safe, with Jason becoming a vainglorious middle-manager, stripped of derring-do yet taking pride in "my networking skills, fearless decision-making and track record of effective delegation".

"You hear a lot of crap," chuckles Swift. "People talking about downsizing and using euphemisms that hide pretty nasty realities. To me it was a fairly obvious target and I'm sure it's been done before, but it definitely needs to be done. And it's just funny. Even people who I respect have started using that phrase, 'going forward'."

This is all well and good but, for a company that might easily be described as a goal-orientated, personnel-valuing model of proactive delegation, where do they get off satirising corporate culture? I mean, they are called the Performance Corporation after all.

"I hated the name," announces Swift. "It sounds like some '80s synth band!" "Yeah," replies Mangan. "Tom wanted it to be the Performance Company.How interesting is that?"

Still, the name has some positive associations. Alive to the ensemble's suggestions and Mangan's fondness for physical performance, Swift keeps his writing similarly flexible. Although respectful of his work, Mangan happily reports that lengthy scenes have been cheerfully jettisoned in favour of Nanette Kincaid's Terpsichorean ideas. "In fairness, she'd be much better at coming up with fabulous choreography than Tom," she says. Reassuringly, this is clearly not a top-down organisation.

"Apart from the actors, there's another 20-odd people working on this show," says Mangan, "all bringing something different to the table. We seek out people who have skills in particular areas . . . "

"Who'll come up with theatre solutions as . . . " chips in Tom.

" . . . to performance problems," Jo finishes.

Yet it's not just site-specific performances that draw the Performance Corporation away from traditional theatre. Cutting edge technologies, a stew of pop culture ideas and the witty assimilation of contemporary references all come from myriad different sources - but few are from the theatre. Are they in some way anti-theatre?

Mangan and Swift, who were clearly not born yesterday, coo back in unison: "Con-tro-versial!" Swift, sensing a trap, adopts a perfect imitation of that fiendish crone from the Carlsberg ad: "Would you like to use the bathroom?"

However, this they will allow: "I love going to see site-specific stuff," says Swift. "It makes theatre an event again and it appeals to a wider audience. Because theatreis frankly so unpopular in this country. It's a bloody nightmare getting people to go. Even when we started off, friends would say, to your face, 'Oh I'd love to go to your show but I just don't do theatre.'

"People are prepared to go to a film that they frankly know to be bad, whereas unless they know a theatre show to be absolutely excellent, they will reluctantly go."

"And there's also the whole thing that theatre is supposed to be an elitist form," shudders Mangan. "That doesn't help either. I'd love if there was a big resurgence in theatre. But I know that the way to create it is not to do the same old stuff but a bit better. It's got to be new stuff, through new ways. People are so used to quick-changing images on TV and incredible special effects in cinema. We can't compete with that. But I think we can compete with proximity and live action and interactivity: we can surround you with an event."

If The Yokohama Corporation stands as a warning against the pathological pursuit of success at all costs, after three accelerated years of accomplishments - "dramatic capacity building" as Swift facetiously puts it - one wonders how the Performance Corporation will cope with its own success.

"Oh dear, how do you know when you're successful?" wonders Mangan. "I mean, sometimes I wonder why we even do it. Is it the opening night? Is that what we do it for? Is it the fun of seeing it all happen? I don't know. But I think the only success that's tangible is the performance, and the satisfaction of seeing it better than you imagined."

The Yokohama Corporation runs August 12th to 21st (excluding the 15th) at Desart House, New Street, Kilkenny. www.kilkennyarts.ie