HIVE

I think the most successful aspect of Hive - or the most exciting aspect - was its ability to trigger interaction between audience members in the times between seeing the work. I attended a workshop about Hive during the GVPTA conference and, from what I understand, it was inspired by Swarm the visual art event where a bunch of galleries opened up at the same time and had a community-wide event. In the visual art world these kinds of things are common. Perhaps the most striking example - in Canada, anyway - was Toronto's Nuit Blanche, which happened this last September. There were 130 art events happening around the city for one night and they reported an attendance of 1/2 million people. It was quite a remarkable event, with the streets crawling with people until 4am. It's telling that, other than myself and Thom Sokolosi, no theatre artists (that i'm aware of) were invited to participate. I think this is because of the rigidity of the way people are forced to consume theatre - even most site specific work. Things like plot, character and conflict get in the way of contemporary ways of thinking about and interfacing with the work. And while much of Hive did still force the typical kind of interaction, there were some pieces that were starting to show fissures. But, again, for me, the most exciting aspect of Hive was the way the audience had to experience the work and each other, not the work itself, though there was plenty of good stuff.