Darren's preferences make sense in relationship to the project of foregrounding the performer-audience relationship as both the form and content of theatrical performance. I share a frustration with the lack of theoretical context for both the training of theatre makers and the creation of theatre, where forms are mostly bound in modernist assumptions, ignoring the way that postmodern strategies have shifted every other form of communication and art creation. The main barrier in breaking through the old styles and means of creating performance seems to be the lack of critical context for even our best writers. Virtuosity is not enough.
I would argue, though, that relational performance, if I can call it that, requires a more rigorous form of imagination than performance based on an imaginary reality. Imagination triggered by the actual given circumstances of the relationship with the audience, circumstances that shift and reveal themselves as the performance transpires, is far more risky than the endlessly rehearsed well-made play. The artistry, or writer or director or dramaturg's role, I would argue, comes into the design of the experience. It feels like the difference between watching a travelogue and going on a trip. The artist's job isn't to conjure the totality of the experience, but to set up sign posts, assist the timing of the passage, figure out the means of transport. But this type of performance also puts the social and political concerns of the artists and audience in play.
How does the selection of the performers, the audience, the performance context, and the activities dictate or reveal the artist's concerns, biases and imagination? Is this the equivalent role to the writer's role in traditional theatre?
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4 comments:
Once you strip away many of the ingredients of what we expect in the theatre: story, characters, beautiful language beautifully spoken, costumes, set, props, lighting, music etc, then I can see your point that creating something meaningful without those usual ingredients is a challenging thing for an artist to achieve. I guess this is what you mean about relational theatre being more rigorous and demanding of the imagination. The success of such a project would depend to a large degree on the originality of the idea and thinking behind the exercise. So relational theatre is to regular theatre what conceptual art is to a representational painting on canvas. Does anyone call it "concept theatre" or "conceptual theatre" I wonder? Looking forward to hearing comments from some of our GVPTA theatre practitioners in the early new year! (Susan Stevenson)
I don't think anyone calls it anything because - as far as I know - it doesn't exist. When I describe some of my projects, people often want to compare it to Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. It's so not that. I think you're right, though, to focus on the fact that the artistic import is in the concepts.
The term 'relational' comes from the visual art world so it would be more accurate to say that relational theatre is to classical theatre what relational art is to classical forms.
But I would much rather dump all the disciplinary distinctions and fold theatre into art in general so we just have relational/littoral/dialogical work(whatever you want to call it). Much of the work in this realm is close to performance art and sometimes very close to theatre. In the visual art world an artists practice will often include a big variety of forms: sculpture, installation, video, performance, text, music etc. But in theatre you make theatre and that's it. I think contemporary theatre artists need to find our way back to the family of visual artists. We've gotten ourselves stuck in an eddy while the visual artists have continued moving down the stream.
Yeah, three cheers for the 5 senses and the diversity of experience in the ritual of live performance! Let's finally concede passive naturalism to the cinema and get on with creating events that explore the live interface, the 'skin' I like to call it (I think computer programmers use that no?)... how we touch the other and how the other touches us.
i like the idea of conceding passive naturalism to the cinema. that's a nice way to put it. it's humble.
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