Friday, January 30, 2015
Avant-Home-and-Garden: Site-specific Theatre and the Politics of Public and Private Space
HowlRound: Approaching an unaddressed house at 10:00pm on a foggy Seattle night, I felt the same flailing thrill of stepping off a curb that I’d felt six months earlier at a community garden in Brooklyn. It’s a sense of griplessness I get in social situations with unfamiliar rules, but it’s unusual for me to feel it going to the theatre—a space in which, as Richard Schechner notes in Environmental Theater, the rules of behavior are usually well regulated and strict.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Site specific and interactive theatre is a fascinating concept. I was lucky enough to see Sleep No More in New York, and I was shocked at how drawn in I was by the world. Every detail, every motion drew me in closer and closer, discovering an entire world with all of it's secrets. That said, this type of theatre is very very difficult to do well. After a couple of experiences, I think that moving, non traditional theatre must be long enough for audience members to become immersed, spacious enough to prevent bottle necking, and the plots really shouldn't be linear or literal. Symbolic movement and growth paint the story in the mind of the audience, and every scene should be able to flow into every other. Most important of all, as the article mentioned, the audience's presence must be addressed. Sleep No More, like Four Story House and Absolutely Somewhere used the audience's presence to push an uncomfortable feeling of voyeurism. The discomfort of these pieces only work to further the productions' subliminal message: This is not theatre like you have ever experienced.
I find Dillon's assertion and Schechner's extrapolation that the presentation of theatre mimics the current nature of public space and sociocultural movements very interesting. Through personal experience, both regarding work I have created and attended, the use of space is very telling of purpose and intent. If the intent of the piece is to incite introspection and self consciousness the use of space and light to make the audience visible to one another and seem complicit in the action is appropriate. However, a more "classic" (i.e. 18th-19th century classic) use of space and the fourth wall can be very appropriate--I see this more successful when examining the characters and their behavior (which may lead to introspection but from a different place, it springs from a different mind state). All in all I think flexibility is key--sometimes cite specific theatre is superfluous, success depends on the reason for creating the fluidity of audience and performer. As everything is in the theatre, use of space is a loaded decision that will be read into and interpreted.
54-102
Post a Comment