Audience Agency in ‘Political’ Theatre in Rehearsal and Performance

Conveners:

Tom Ross-Williams: (Populace theatre)

Becki Hillman: (In Good Company)

Participants: Tom Brocklehurst, John Ward, Susana Davis Cook, Rod Dixon, Christina Caralina, Nicola Sianhope, Fran Hyde, Eve Leigh, Lauren Cooney, Emma Callander…

 

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

Questions/provocations/models of practice/thoughts relating to the group discussion:

-       come to me with a solution, not a problem

-       how do giving answers/asking questions lead to political agency in performance?

-       positivity/negativity for politicisation in performance

-       the efficacy of ownership/belonging for a theatre of action

-       Theatre Uncut and David Greig: his short play last year needing audience to participate – and empowering model? (Engendered emotional responses from audience members who empathised with what was going on and had to perform role-play)… …(but is an audience reading from a script in unison always empowering?)

-       Third Ring Out (performance) – educative, gaming model of performance, which began anonymously but became more involved/actively engaged

-       An invitation to become active/the active engagement of the audience must not lead to nowhere! (Where can it lead? – into other actions/networks/practices/social movements or groups? Into further productions? – how can we facilitate further engagement, what obstacles might we encounter as practitioners and how might we overcome them??)

-       Collective identity feels safer for an audience to practice agency (builds confidence). How can we engender this in rehearsal/performance? By splitting people into groups? Inviting them to socialise? Involving them in process……..

-       Is the word ‘political’ a turn off to theatre audiences (and what audiences do we want to politicize?) Is it unsexy/not escapist enough?...Automatically unpopular? Or is this relative to historical/political/economic contexts? Where is it sexy/popular? (Scotland? Other…?)

-       OR reclaim the word ‘political’???

-       Is being told something or being preached at always something we shy away from or do we accept it in contexts that aren’t ‘political’?

-       Is theatre encountering its biggest period of ‘formal explosion’?!

There’s much more but I am running out of time!....... thanks to tom and participants for great discussion! Becki

-       Donation  only political theatre

-       Don’t turn the lights out on the audience

-       Giving people a shared experience

-       But give audience a  role in political theatre is important

-       Leave a show feeling galvanised rather than  pacified

-       The power of obstruction – audience unified by having to solve a problem  of sharing a tight space

-       Encouraging audiences to be disobedient

-       Audience  - Soho Theatre  (manipulated  but disempowered?)

-       Nature of the offer given to the audience

o   If we are told what to think do we turn off?         

o   Demanding to share viewpoints  to incite reactionary thinking/action

-       Connect  audience to tangible  stories rather than abstract ideas

o   Like the demolition of local building

o   Localised is political theatre

-       We can learn from other forms – circus/stand-up/dance

-       7:84 Black Black Oil

-       What is your language

o   Political issue explored through a ceilidh

-       Shalom Baby – political  moment a gay kiss in Stratford East

-       “Be the change you want to see in the world”

Leave the theatre with the world “yes!”