MANIFESTO!

Britain’s appeal for a re-nationalised National Theatre.

Britain’s national theatre is not relevant to its entire audience. Housed in London, it appeals to a small demographic of society, making little attempt to leave its monumental home in search for the nation’s performance capacity. It’s become a platform for indulging in celebrity as a means of civic pride. Rather than expressing its nations talent it seeks to maintain and glorify its own status.

The audience is limited and exclusive. The performance selection process is inherently biased. It’s become a place of representing what British theatre should be, rather than enhancing national theatre as it could be. Token gestures of ‘community engagement’ don’t encourage ownership, but limit involvement!

Today, a far more democratic performance showcase is already rising. This grassroots system is grown through making use of the Internet in a relevant and clever way. Utilizing video sharing technology, no one organisation body has to decide what is shown, neither are audiences targeted specifically. The success of work is based on the popularity, and therefore the ranking of the piece.

Britain needs a National Theatre that is completely renationalised, a theatre that exists not in one place, but is dispersed across the length and breadth of the country. In the streets, people’s homes, in schools, abandoned factories, leisure centres, church halls and fields the content is decided by its online audience.

Work would initially be selected for development through a democratic audience ranking system. The work is then eventually shown in the original location. This location could be anywhere in the country, not just London.

Our Monument of civic pride on the South Bank will inevitably be questioned. What is the need for a physical centralised building when there is a thriving self-supported National Theatre that is far more transient and broader than one geographical location?

Britain needs to take ownership of its theatre heritage, navigating its way forward, instead of leaving responsibility to a few, predominantly middle class people in one part of the country.

Conceive an institution known for creating politics rather than representing them, one that counters the hierarchical structure of our society in which we make theatre, one pushes our working method into the new millennium.

Test 3

The third and final of this round of performance tests. This time indoors at Wimbledon College of Art in the ground floor lift lobby behind the theatre foyer.

In this event, again making use of the same direction and actor, but a different scene being played out, the red cushions were used but not separated by space from the action.
The audience were invited into the room where the cushions were placed in a circle on the floor. Not only did they provide the audience with the unspoken message of where to sit, but they acted as a design element within the way the scene was played out by the actor. Invited to attend the group counseling session, the border between spectator and actor was merged. What the cushions did here was, on one hand, provide a seat for the spectator, but then also forced the spectator to become involved with the action through keeping a level of proximity and intimacy.

Test 2

The second of three test performances. This time In a semi-underground car park. Eleven red cushions laid out on a wall 40cm high. The audience are not told where to sit but follow the lead of the first person. Once seated the performance begins.

Housed in a semi-indoor space, artificially lit by fouresent lights, the audience of eleven followed the lead of one usher into the space. Confronted by eleven red cushions on a wall the audience sat and waited for the performance to start.

The aim of this test was to reproduce well known conventions of traditional theatre houses. The cushions were intended not so much for comfort, but more as a symbol to inform the audience to be seated, where to be seated and how far apart from each other to sit. Differently to the previous performance, there was a much more intensified level of focus between actor and spectator due to the defined areas for each.

Test 1

National Performance Venue test performance. Outside space. Hardly any 'architectural' elements added.

This was the first of three performances held in Wimbledon last week. I worked with a actor, Hannah and a course mate, Izzy, who have both been working on Sarah Kane's Pshychosis performance individually. The collaboration brought the three separate elements of human presence, design and direction and the assistance of audience needs. (my bit)

In this, the first piece, Izzy requested that in order for the performance to work best, any elements other than the actor and design elements be reduced in order to not distract from the code of performang in a public space. Therefore my role was slightly redefined in that the main objective become the marketing and advertising of the event rather than providing any actual designed elements for the performance.

The posters and flyers were photocopy-able black and white print outs that could be selected, have the details completed by the users and posted wherever necessary. the poster included details such as the place, time and the name of the performance.

The Entire Theatre

Today a friend showed me this quote by Richard Schechner. It's taken from Performance Theory which, although written in 1977, seems to have stood the test of time with regard to the basic analysis of theatre and its audiences.

When people go to the theatre they are acknowledging that theatre takes place at special times in special places. Surrounding a show are special observances, practices and rituals that lead into the performance and away from it. Not only getting into the theatre district, but entering the building itself involves ceremony: ticket-taking, passing through gates, performing rituals, finding a place from witch to watch: all this - and the procedures vary from culture to culture, event to event, -frames and defines the performance. " (Page 169)

This comes as an encouragement at a time where the main attention of the project is focusing on the public spaces that are often perceived as supporting the rest of the performance. What many fail to realise, in my opinion, is that there are many more factors than the performance itself that serve to influence an audience's experience of the theatre. Marvin Carlson, a thoerist specialising in the semiotics of theatre architecture writes this in Places of Performance,

The way an audience experiences and interprets a play, we now recognise, is by no means governed solely by what happens on the stage. The entire theatre, its audience arrangements, its other public spaces, its physical appearance, even its location within a city, are all important elements of a process by which an audience makes meaning of its experience. (1989 p.2)

We need to become more sensative to recognising the roll that the whole theatre plays. The countless interactions with the architecture, the marketing, public facilities such as the cloak room , the bar and the toilets, all make up the entire audience experience. Does one reality really stop at the fourth wall where another begins? And is visiting the theatre just about seeing the performance or is it more about engaging in an entire cultural experience?

The first of the initial set of 'experiment performances' will be this Friday 16th Jan. There will be three separate parts to it, each in different locations within Wimbledon.
Meet outside the Odeon cinema at 3pm. The entire performance will take no longer than 30 minutes.

The Total Text

Hans-Thies Lehmann wites in Postdramatic theatre (2006) that "Theatre is no longer a mass medium. To deny this becomes increasingly ridiculous, to reflect on it increasingly urgent." (P.27) Lehmann is writing about a post 1960's era where the text no longer takes a central role in making theatre, since we are no longer a text-based culture.. He useas a term, total text, that refers to how the entire perfromance is made up through its many elements.

This project, for a more national theatre is about extending the periphery of the existing National Theatre on London's south bank. It's about breaking down the heirarchical structure in which theatre is made, handing control back to the individual in their local situation.

Jerry Grotowski wrote that "The essential concern is finding the proper spectator-actor relationship for each type of performance and embodying the decision in physical arrangements. (Towards a poor theatre 1968. P.20)

These texts have been vital in making up a strong argument for this project and have heavily informed many of the smaller decisions being made. A realisation this week came about an essential element to the final product's roll.

I have been struggling with the project for a few weeks. The hard part was getting my head around how a temporary theatre set up can acknowlege the specific site, whilst not encroaching on the design elements. In other words, the focus of the work needs to be much more about the audience than it does about trying to produce some kind of kit that can assist the performer and the performance, as this would be dealt with by the many artists who chose to participate eventually anyway.

The work throughout January will be a series of small 'tests' to get sharpen up and practically inform a few ideas that are waiting in the pipeline about audience and essentially how the (architectural) features can inform the relationship between actor and spectator, (Intimacy and engagement) whilst also meeting the practical needs of a spectator upon arrival to a performance event. Keep checking back throughout the month for film clips and images.