I have been thinking a lot recently about the questions that I have been asking myself so far this year, and have come to the conclusion that they have been the wrong ones but in the right area.
What I really want to do is write a type of manifesto. I have needed to work out where I situate my practice (which believe it or not I have done), and then use it to structure my own work with. I want to be able to outline what I think theatre should be, what quantifies it, and then investigate how and why it works in contemporary society. In striving to do this I think that I have identified a type of theatre that encompasses everything I believe is integral to it as an art form.
Of course I know what liveness is… more to the point I’m dam sure I know what theatre is (it’s a lesson to us all kids – don’t read too many books they fry your brain and you will forget even your name)! And to be honest am not all that interested in deconstructing the relationship between the mediatized and the live (Philip Auslander has already done it far better than I ever will); but what I am interested in is theatre's response to the current contemporary context, of a media, product driven society.
… introducing “Organic Theatre”! I am not loving the term organic here – but it most aptly describes the strain of theatre I am investigating and try as I might I haven’t found a term for it on the internet or in my books yet. (If anybody reading this can identify the type of theatre I am talking about with a more apt name please hurry and let me know).
Organic Theatre is a type of theatre that is unique every time you witness it – you will never witness the same performance twice (and I don’t mean in the obvious sense of context and the linear flow of time – theatre is pushing past that and taking it (and liveness with it) to the extreme). It is the hand-crafted vs Ikea. It evolves and grows the more it is performed. It responds to site, audience, and indeed it own performers and their personal histories. The construction of theatre is made more than visible – it is commented on during the performance and often in the form of dual narrative. Organic Theatre outs its own construction time and time again. Process can be performance.
Tim Crouch in general, but more specifically in ‘An Oak Tree’ is the perfect example of an Organic Theatre maker. He never works with the same actor twice, so you will never see it performed in the same way. The audience are constantly told and informed ‘how this piece is being made, in front of the audience and in conjunction with them, now, live, never to be repeated again’.
Nic Green is another performer who I would classify as working with Organic Theatre. During her performance ‘Cloud Piece’ she not only told her story of the fear of loosing her imagination and her journey to try and get it back, but she also told the audience how this piece was created. She reenacted previous performances, their developments, which sections she omitted from this performance and why. Green explains where the concept for the performance came from and then details her difficulties in working due to the fact that her Grandfather died; she explains that this changed the piece. Green performs with an 11 year old girl in ‘Cloud Piece’ and also incorporates her personal history into the work.
As an audience member I felt present during Greens performance. You feel as though you are witnessing the creation of something (in fact you are practically told that that is what is happening). It was well worth being in the theatre and not in the cinema!
Caroline Smith’s ‘Spank’ also grows and responds to site and personal history each time it is performed.
Part of the charm of these performances, is that as an audience member, you can almost collect them and have input into, or at least feel present in their development – something, which, as a society we are accustomed to in other areas but not yet in theatre. This can be from the sidelines as in ‘I was there’ or actively in feed back sessions. No matter how many times you go to see a performance they will always be different, a series to be collected, distinguished between, and viewed as part of an unobtainable whole.
I am going to leave it soon… as this is my longest blog ever! But BAC scratch nights are another phenomena that has identified not only the need of performers to obtain feed back on work – but also the desire of an audience to be part of a process. I would like to note here though that Organic Theatre is not a ‘work in progress’ performance (as in unfinished). Each performance is a complete work, it will simply naturally change and evolve next time it is performed.
Phew – there is so much more I want to rant on about but have just written over 800 words!
Let me know what you think, questions, references – a better term than Organic Theatre!
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5 comments:
That is so awesome! It's great to see it written down. It's very clear and seems so very "you". And look at what a no brainer 800 words was! :)
Congratulations. It was really amazing to hear you talk the other day. It was just right there on the tip of your tongue. Wee!
And Doug will regret that he planted the "manifesto" notion in our head. I'm working on mine. As I'm typing this, gotta check back in with Fluxus and make sure I'm clear on the distinction in my presentation.
Thanks love,
It was a great help talking to you. It really cleared it up in my head - I was surprised once I started talking how much I actually knew! I could probably have kept going in the blog so everything has just clicked into place.
I went to that Material Theatre conference thing today which was amazing! It completely reaffirmed everything that I have been thinking about the current state of theatre... I am brain dead now after sitting through about 6 hours of papers and talks (my heaven though I have to say... pure unadulterated theatre theory! We were even in a real live theatre!!! whoop), but I will blog all about it over the weekend.
Looking forward to seeing yours!
xx
hey lady
its great to see you so confident again and excited about your work. you haven't abandoned liveness and mediatized as it will come into this, a better way round for you. our discussion together about process as performance will i hope continue to help us both out on our research.
and what do you mean about the pure unadulterated theatre theory today! i would have been totally out of my depth/confused/asleep! mix it up, i say- which bits and pieces did today :)
the panel discussion on participation whilst fighting towards that was pulled back by art repeatedly! and the body sculpture gallery pieces promoted a debate around touching/not touching in art galleries which was interesting
x
HAha I know that love! I was being funny (in my not so humerous way). Although I have to say any art discussions that were had were related directly to performance and not the other way round for a change which is what I picked up on.. and it made me very happy.
I think yesterday as so refreshing for me because college is a fine art saturated environment and I sometimes struggle there (having no fine art background myself - I know that you have found this yourself with the crits). It is a very product orientated environment, and although a lot of the conference was about object it used performatity and theatre to dicuss and evaluate its worth! I enjoyed theatre being the focus and of course art and galleries and their spaces come into it (as it always has since Live and Performance art) because theatre is an art form and I don;t think that anyone would be presumtious enough to think that theatre stood outside of that on its own!
As for the mixing it up part -you know what I mean! Of course you can't sit though just theory - hence the reason that I came to wimbledon in the first place; to work on my practice and try and get it up to speed with the theory. All I was trying to say (in my not so humerous was) was that I have missed the theoretical side and lectures in that format - they are what I am used to I guess.
Hopefully you could see from the blog that theory didn;t really make an appearence which surprised me! When I was talking to Lena about it the first thing that I talked about were practitioners and my own work! Just shows it may have all been worth it yet! lol
It does feel good to have my confidence and passion back again at last! And the work that we are doing has been a huge part of that. Thinking about process is something that we have been disucssing since the first term - it is only now I realise the emphasis that it holds for me. I totally agree with you about not having abandoned the live and he mediatized - it s research that I needed to do to get here. It has alowed me to consider the environment that we are all working in and not see it in a negative way. It is really important that people understand that when I am talking about Organic Theatre I do not see it as in opposition the the mediatized, I do not see it as a cure or as kicking against it in anyway. I great deal of the work harnesses media.
xxx
I think you are on a very interesting debate.
I think there are slightly similiar debates but in the nature of semotics and linguist where meaning is constantly changed by the act of language, from Kristeva and Bahktin. Also ostensibly theatre should--if it's doing what it is suppose to do --enact social change. So what I'm saying in the first instance, and what I've been going on about all year is that theatre is fundamentally about change So you notion of the Organic is already there. I know you're not arguing against that but identifying a type of theatre that promotes and utilizes change in the presences of its performative action. That's why I admire Tim's work so much.
It seems your initial interest in mediatization and liveness directly links with the process of "representation". Theatre over the last couple of hundred years have attempted to "frame" the representative while media based performance have been trying to deny these borders. From what I can think of is that no one had really yet identified this, or at least done a proper survey of this within a practical context. Many theorist like Walter Benjamin have question it theoretically, however, the tension has always been--getting back to my first point--between drama as change within a literary context or as a playful set of actions. In its literary sense there is a tendency to fix the drama so Deconstructionist have attempted to literally blow this apart. In the same way that Performance Art responded in a post modern context of fixing the process of art practice.
The issue that you may include is how funding has historically, as in Fine Art, moved to fix work as its easier to formulate a concrete output. Which is in essences how work is made, seen and talked about. Many artist have responded to this by working in a multiple of disciplines and speaking to a changing audience that defies fixed definition. It seems this notion is filtering through I heard on Radio 4 the other day the idea in government to separate the word culture from creativity and wether the government is supporting culture or instead supporting art practice that triggers creativity which in turns changes culture. I bring this up only to agree with you point about the need for product driven processes.
So in the end, yes--its all viable and worthy of investigation.
By the way there is a company in Chicago called Organic Theatre. They've been around for ages--Mamet sharpened his teeth there, Interestingly in their early days they were a bunch of College kids from Northwestern and Loyola who made theatre outside convention because frankly they were naive unstructured and didn't know better. Over their heyday they made alot of hit and miss theatre but it kept to its mission of exploring and changing styles. This was until they starting finding larger audiences and got a board of directors--which in America is usually made up of people who can get money for the theatre--now they do standard literary work.
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