Firstly, what did I have to do?  Well I had to come up with a performance or preinitiation to demonstrate an aspect of one of the subjects we had learnt over the course of the term.  I wanted to do something different, I didn’t really want to do a presentation as I thought a performance would be more fun and interesting.  I decided that I would do something with the post-modern and work without, or with a little script and focus on sound to create atmosphere.  I thought this would be easy as I would only have to make some sounds and then tell a story.  I then decided that it should be the audience’s story, and they would decide what happens, where they go and what they do, I would facilitate it and make the story biased on their decisions.  This turned out to be a lot more work than simply writing a script or story to tell.

The focus went away from the sound and became instead about creating a world for the audience to explore.  There was no way I could script for everything that the audience could do as it was not option based.  This meant that a lot of it had to be improvised, in fact for the feeteen minute performance, which I may have over run, the only script I had was this:

 

Good evening ladies and gentlemen.  Tonight we are going on an adventure.  What happens is up to you.  I will guide you through but you have to tell be what you want to do.  You are playing a group of knights in a fantasy world.  I’ll give you a setting and then it’s entity up to you where, what, why and how you do it.  Are there any question?

‘Answer any question.

Start music.  (lighting queue)  You’ll know it’s about to start as I will go round to my laptop.

Welcome brave knights to Lestria. The hilly Kingdom to the west, in the land of Concordia. At war now for many years with the other kingdoms in their struggle for power, wealth and supremacy.
The king has called you off the front lines as a band of his most loyal and trustworthy men to investigate the mystery on goings in the Town of Grimshaw. A town sunk in a valley with hills on all sides. It is up to you to find out why the town has been out of contact for so long and regain their support for the war.
When you arrive in the centre of Grimshaw the sun has already set and the market is closed. The only signs of life on this cold, dark and windy night are in the tavern to your left.
The town seems perfectly normal but the night seems unnaturally dark. What magic is at play? What danger will you face? What evil lurks in the darkness?
Will you save the town and help your king? Will you simply fritter away your time and return empty handed or will the dark power around Grimshaw drag you in and never release you? This is your chance. This is your glory. This is you up story. So… What would you like to do?

The performance.

Final line:  Hopefully you’ll have greater fortune next time. (Lighting queue)’

 

As you can see, I have the explanation of the ‘rules’ or what is expected of the audience.  This is quite similar to how Tim Crouch interacts with his audience, ‘Crouch’s approach challenges the widespread assumption that ‘drama’ belongs to a literary theatrical tradition’.  The only scripted part of the performance the intro introduction that sets the scene for the audience.  The rest is up to them.  I gave the world a lot of thought and had serval scenarios thought-out and what characters they could meet and how they would interact.

Overall I think that it worked.  The audience seemed to enjoy it and it demonstrated how the script is not important for this performance.  It was all about thinking on your feet and knowing the world that you plunged the audience into.

 

 

 

Bottoms Stephen, ‘Authorizing the Audience: The conceptual drama of Tim Crouch’ (2009) Taylor & Francis Ltd.  Accessed on: 25/12/2014

Ghosting in theatre is an interesting idea.  The principle goes that if something has been used in a show before then that object begins to have being beyond that of its purpose with that the current performance is using it.  This does not only apply to objects but to people and character.  Take Hamlet for example, a character that gets played a lot by a lot of different people, regardless of whether or not the audience intends to they will judge the actor playing Hamlet on the previous performance they have seen, or maybe they hold one interpretation above others.  This means that the character of Hamlet has many ghosts connected to it.  But then actors also have ghosts; sticking to the theme of Hamlet and one performance in particular, David Tenant as Hamlet.  Here a well know actor for his work in Dr. Who played the iconic role of Hamlet.  David Tenant’s performances contained ghosts as the audience would be expecting to see the Doctor on stage.  This works for this performance as they are able to combine Hamlet and the Doctor into the one character that was seen in that performance of Hamlet.

So ghosting within performances can be good and bad.  For instant Kelsey Grammer hid his identity so that he could be taken more seriously in a role he was playing.  This was to prevent people from thinking of him as Frasier from his hit TV show, Frasier.  Here is a clear example of when ghosting goes wrong, or at the very least could have negative effects on a performance.  From these it would seem that ghosting is a form of audience interpretation, a way of judging and recognising items and people on stage.  This is not true for all production as some go out of their way to use actors that are unknown, but it is almost impossible to choose someone that no one will recognise.

 

Quick Andrew, (2009) The Stay of Illusion, Taylor & Francis Ltd

Kinesics – The study of those body movements and gestures by which, as well as by speech, communication is made; body movements and gestures which convey meaning non-vocally. (Oxford English Dictionary, 2014)  This focus on the movements of the theatre and the meaning they convey, so the dictionary is more of less dead on in this case.

Semiotics – The science of communication studied through the interpretation of signs and symbols as they operate in various fields, esp. language (Oxford English Dictionary, 2014)  So, in our case we are focusing on the interpretation of signs and the meaning they convey.

Proxemics – The study or interpretation of physical proximity between people in various situations; the ways in which people interact spatially, esp. in maintaining a certain amount of space between themselves and others. (Oxford English Dictionary, 2014)  In the case of the theatre this means all the spaces, that between the audience members and other member of the audience, also to the audience to the actor, the actor to other actor and the actor to objects on stage.

But why start with all these definition?  Well these are all the elements that need to be considered when designing a set and directing a performance to identify what will be conveyed to the audience.  Arnold Aronson refers to the stage as staring in the abyss, which is capable of staring back at you.  This suggests that the stage can represent anything.  It starts as a blank empty space and then it is the director’s job to fill it with meaning, if he/she does this correctly then it may mirror the audience of tell them something about themselves.  It seems to all come down to conveying meaning or, in the case of some performances, conveying a deliberate lack of meaning to create reason.  To this end everything on the stage is there for a reason and if you want to convey meaning successfully, nothing can be left to chance.

 

Aronson, Arnold (2005) Looking into the Abyss: Essays on Scenography, USA: University of Michigan Press.

Oxford English Dictionary, (2014) Oxford: Oxford University Press, Available from: http://www.oed.com.proxy.library.lincoln.ac.uk/

In order to see where we are now in Drama it would make sense for us to first look briefly at where we have come from.  Our first National Theatre was opened in 1961 about three hundred years after France had opened theirs.  Europe believes that theatre is good for a country and its society.  Due to this stance meant that developments and the movement within Drama came from other European countries to Britain.  Britain tends to lag behind as it is sealed off from the other countries and lives in its own world so to speak.  In the 1950s Britain was still focused on the music halls, light comedies and suppressed emotions targeting that of the middle classes and trying to entertain as opposed to convey meaning as such.  It wasn’t until 1956 and a play named ‘Look back in Anger’ that this began to change.  Side note, although this wasn’t the first play it is generally acknowledged as the play that changed it all.

The Royal Court also became very important in changing theatre and drama practise, during the years of 54/55 the lead behind choosing the plays that attended the Royal Court was instrumental in developing the theatre.  All the important plays went to the Royal Court meaning that if someone was able to put on a play there it would propel it into the eye of the British.  This allowed new young English play writes that have something to say about society to convey it through their plays.  So more domestic plays about real people, if you like, appeared on stage, aiming more at lower classes.  The Royal Court felt that it was its duty to allow these new voices onto the stage and convey their messages to the people.  Around this time it was viewed that it was the director’s job to make the voice of the playwright shine through.  ‘The Right to Fail’ also became a phrase used for new performances, which is pretty self-explanatory, but it meant that more experiment forms of theatre where then able to emerge and plays such as, ‘Young Angry Men’ which in turn create the teenage culture that we now except as part of society.  The major play writes began using theatre as a means to convey their political message.

The 70s contained more experimental theatre and the fringe theatre began, allowing many new playwrights to show what they had to contribute.  But this new wave of experimental theatre runs out of steam by the late 80s early 90s.  Around this point the progression of British theatre slows down once more and become stuck in a rut.  This comes around from the lack of new writers and the idea of revivals, putting on a play they know is going to work as opposed to trying out and possible spending more money than is necessary.  Thankfully this did not last long as a new type of theatre emerged; the ‘in-yer-face’ which focused more on personal pain: psychological experiences, drug use and violence to just name a few features.  This was designed to make the audience feel like they had been through this experience with the actors on stage so that they could have a glimpse into their world.  This new edgy theatre began to overtake that of revivals and adaptations.  However they soon realised that this was a very binary way of structuring play and so naturism was in full swing meaning that the history of theatre had come full cycle.

So where are we now?  The classics are still being revived and adapted, but the idea of traditional theatre is now constantly being played with.  There is no longer a set venue that a performance has to take place in: the street, factories anywhere you can think of, a performance can take place there.  There are methods for new writers to be discovered, if you mind that crude phrasing, through writing guilds and competitions and of course the Fringe, if they can find the funding.  The writers are very free to express themselves through these performances.  More collaborate efforts are occurring where groups of people decide to that they want to create something and so everyone in the performance has a say about the direction that it will take.  Overall the mixture of theatre and performances available means that anyone who has a valid point to make will be able to find a way of telling it, and if someone just wants to go to the theatre of an evening of light entertainment that is also available.  I would like to think that British theatre, although still arguably behind that of Europe, is in a good place at the moment.

Unlike some of the other post terms used in theatre studies post-dramatic is not as negative as others; it is not an attempt to move away or ignore the principles that come before it, but rather to change the focus.  It is aware of dramatic theatre/performance but doesn’t try to recreate it.  This is due to a changing point of view on how theatre should be studied.  As Liz Tomlin points out that drama and theatre studies came from ‘English Literature departments in 1960s’ (2009) meaning that the analysis comes from the script instead of looking at the performance.  As technology advanced then more and more could not be seen in just a script and the post-dramatic wanted to move any from script based performances and more to devised pieces.  This is not because they want to abolish dramatic theatre but to ‘to call theatre “postdramatic” involves subjecting the traditional relationship of theatre to drama to deconstruction’ (2006) as Karen Jürs-Munby puts it.

One of the main problems is determining when a piece of theatre or drama becomes post-dramatic.  Which is made all the more difficult as we also need to consider how theatre should be viewed.  Dan Rebellato claims that, ‘Theatrical representation as metaphorical; actors give performances that becomes metaphors for the characters, the stage becomes a metaphor for indeterminate imaginary worlds or determinate real ones.’ (2009)  This is an apt way of viewing theatre and performance and although it does still contain flaws, it seems to be one of the most complete ways of viewing it.  But the question remains, at what point does a show become post dramatic?

It is generally considered that it comes post-dramatic when the performance doesn’t rely on the script.  So other elements become more important, such as sound, lighting, movement as apposed too the words on the page.  To put it crudely, is the performance uses lighting for 78% of the performance then the script would only be used for 22% meaning that it would be post-dramatic, anything over the 50% thresh hold.  But if it still uses the original text and we still get a moment of catharsis at the end it could still be seen as dramatic.  In essence the lines a blurred and it becomes a matter of opinion and intent not a mathematical formula.

Hans-Thies Lehmann: Translated and introduced by Karen Jürs-Munby Postdramatic Theatre (Routledge: London, 2006)

Rebellato Dan, When We Talk of Horses Or, what do we see when we see a play, Taylor & Francis Ltd. (2009)

Tomlin Liz, ‘And their stories fell apart even as I was telling them’ Poststructuralist performance and the no-longer-dramatic text, Taylor & Francis Ltd. (2009)