Conflux will transform the streets of Glasgow to engage people where they shop and work

THE streets of Glasgow are often populated by colourful characters but the oddball factor will be increased to warp speed ten next week when the Surge festival lifts off. Surge is organised by Conflux, a body to promote and develop street arts, physical theatre and circus in Scotland.

In print, Surge sounds fairly straightforward. On the streets, it promises to be rather more unpredictable. Gladiatorial parades down Buchanan Street and alien abductions from George Square will be among the more high-profile open-air events. The Arches and the newly opened Briggait complex promise late-night cabaret, Chinese aerial acrobatics and hardcore clowning, courtesy of acts such as Red Bastard, who is billed as "America's premiere bouffon".

From tide-based events at Broomielaw Quay to street art at the Merchant City Festival, Surge aims to briefly but radically alter a huge swath of Glasgow city centre. Al Seed is the artistic director at Conflux. He stresses the importance of developing up-and-coming physical performance artists, the networking opportunities Surge represents for Scotland's previously disparate physical theatre performance groups, and the collaborative legacy he hopes Surge will nurture.

However, for the next week, it all comes down to one simple aim: "We want to saturate the centre of town with a sense of fun. Surge hopes to transform how people think about the centre of Glasgow."

There is something uplifting about trying to modify people's perception of their surroundings. Rather than streets simply being the means by which people travel to work or places where people go to buy goods, street performance can make them places of play. Alan Richardson, project director at Conflux, doesn't quite go so far as to say that street performance is subversive, he prefers the term "mind-bending", but he does point towards the mission statement of the Glaswegian street artists Mischief La-Bas, the group behind next Friday's Conflux Maximus gladiatorial parade down Buchanan Street.

"Their mission statement is to 'gently warp the underlay of the fabric of society'," beams Richardson. "I like that and it's a sentiment that's not just specific to their work."

Seed joins in with the idea that an important element of street theatre is that it encourages both the performers and their audiences to take ownership of the space: "It's an invitation for the audience to join in, and that's when it gets really fun."

As well as trying to create a self-sustaining community of people involved in Scottish street arts, physical theatre and circus, part of Conflux's remit is to broaden the meaning of those terms in the minds of the general public in Scotland. Seed acknowledges that, for many people, street theatre means a bloke singing Wonderwall for change on the subway, while circus means a ringmaster with a bullwhip and stick-on 'tache. But, he argues, that doesn't begin to cover the genres that the terms could cover.

"The immediate association that a lot of people have with street arts is busking. That's a completely valid thing to do but it's only a tiny portion of what street arts can be. It's the same with circus, we've all seen people juggling fire clubs on the Royal Mile at Festival time but there are possibilities way beyond that.

"In terms of circus or street theatre, if you look at places like Canada, France or Spain, they may as well be different planets. The culture of street theatre in those countries is absolutely embedded and recognised, and audiences are more aware of that kind of work. Circus or street theatre here is still quite novel for the general public. It's not so embedded in the culture and that, basically, is why we are here: to try to change that."

While the large-scale, outdoors events will be the most highly visible signs of Surge, some of the indoor performances promise a more intimate intensity. Interaction between the performer and the audience is a large part of much physical theatre and street theatre. Surge shows such as The Venus Labyrinth take that idea to extremes.

Set in the maze of underground rooms at The Arches, The Venus Labyrinth is a Danish production from the Cantabile 2 company. Individual audience members enter a web of rooms at five minute intervals. Each room contains a solo female performer. Some of the rooms are massive railway arches. Others are little more than broom cupboards. How the audience member and the performer interact defines the experience of the show.

"Venus Labyrinth will stretch what people expect of physical theatre," says Seed. "What's really fascinating about it is that the experience for the audience member is a genuine exchange with the performer.

"The performers have a structure for when the audience member arrives but depending on what the audience member does can completely shift their whole journey through that room. It goes back to being responsive to the immediacy of the situation. All performance is live but this is based on the idea that anything can happen in the next five minutes."

Venus Labyrinth is a hard show to pin down because each performance will be different. There are parameters in place but the permutations for how each show will work out are endless. It is an exciting but nebulous idea and that's just the way Seed likes his physical theatre: "As a rule of thumb, if it takes half an hour to try and explain it and it still doesn't fit into a box then that is what we are interested in doing."

lSurge takes place in Glasgow, 19-25 July. See www.conflux.co.uk for more information.