The politics of theatre/the theatre of politics: Making the change we want to see.

Convener: Aliki Chapple

Participants: Nir, Camila

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

Nir spoke about a project his company is working on which is controversial and very political and how he is frightened of masking himself vulnerable in this way and the reactions it will provoke. We talked about needing to honour strands of  our personal and social experience and identity that are in tension, or even direct contradiction with each other.

We said that all theatre is political, because it is social, and human –even though there is a more activist strand of theatre that is self-consciously political. Camila talked about holistic making practices and the relationship between form and process. We also talked about the echo chamber of left-wing arts circles, and how we all to often preach to the converted and wear our convictions as a badge instead of examining and challenging them.

“We’re playing Hamlet to the Hamlets in the audience, we need to play it to the Claudiuses”

We agreed on a need to open discussions, and to keep work open to audiences instead of walling ourselves off.

We bogged down because Camila gave examples of work she thought was politically holistic with the process reflected in the result, and Nir and I felt very strongly that the examples she gave didn’t illustrate that

But we agreed that the accessibility /inaccessibility of form and the nature of the making process were as important as content to the political identity of work.

Actions:

We all make work we consider political; we’re going to do our utmost to see each other’s and feed back/ reflect.

Email addresses and company URLs were exchanged.