Early this month I took part in the second session of “Crossing the Lines: Adventures of a Textual Nature.” This event is coordinated by the Arches and Playwrights’ Studio, Scotland, organizations that do not normally share artistic remits beyond that of promoting new work. The Arches is an organization that positions itself on the periphery of normative performance practices, while the Playwrights’ Studio, Scotland supports new writing and I think that is the modern conception of stage plays (however post-modern they may attempt to be they fall within conventional practices.) This collaboration is an attempt to bridge the gap between the artists associated with both organizations and to introduce non-theatre arts practitioners to the theatre as directors. The idea is simple: extent text by published playwrights are handed over for experimental stagings to non-traditional arts practitioners.
In the first session of “Crossing the Lines” I took part as a director. I created a two person scene from a wonderful play by Debbie Jones. I used the platform as an opportunity to experiment in a big way – I took the text, went to its heart, and staged what I found there in pure form. I left behind a lot of the staging as the writer indicated, I abandoned some of the theatrical gestures in the language and used the text to guide my creation of an emotional enactment of the text. You can read about my experience here.
What was interesting in that first session was that all of the participants were theatre makers by an large. We all came to it with a similar vocabulary for staging. I wouldn’t say there was anything particularly earth shattering about any one presentation but only because I didn’t know all of the original texts. Had I known those texts I might have understood the experiment in greater detail. Perhaps the earth was shattered under the feet of the playwrights, their characters and their worlds. But how could I know. I could only know the experiment I had performed.
This came up in the discussion following the performance on Tuesday the 3rd of November. That “Crossing the Lines” saw Vanessa Coffey, Victoria Beasley and Paul Henry perform three very different pieces, perform three very different experiments, with three very different results. The richness of these performances was enhanced for me because I had read two of the three pieces before seeing them performed. I had been asked to host the discussion following the performances and gladly obliged, having had such an intriguing and enjoyable experience as a director previously. So, having prepped myself by reading the texts I had insight into the work that the audience didn’t have (with few exceptions.)
It was suggested that the event be changed slightly, so that the directors tackle the same scene from the same play – and that would be a modern drama, Chekhov for example. This way we would see how each artist interpreted the piece and in what ways their practice informed the staging. This way the experiment could be shared more widely and the audience could respond to more than just the piece they saw in front of them. If there was a wider experience of the source text and a variety of interpretations on display the discussion could be shared more deeply more broadly.
That said, this session of “Crossing the Lines” was hugely successful. I made it clear at the outset that we weren’t kidding anyone, this even is for the performance sector as much as it is of the performance sector. And having acknowledged that we were participating as a community (audience and performer alike) than we should feel to give and receive criticism in the spirit of adventurers. Respecting that these were unresourced projects, these were debuts, and these were experimental to start with, the conversation started rapidly to heat up.
My opening question was, where they felt their allegiance was when making the piece, to the playwright and her words or to themselves and their own practice. Most agreed it was the later, that their relationship to the words was not one of submission. Instead, the words became a piece to the puzzle, but one of many. I understand this is acceptable but perhaps it is only acceptable because as a performance maker myself I appreciate the performance text (the physical, visual elements) are not always related to and certainly do not always serve the literary text. Indeed, I would say my preference lies with those performances at Crossing the Lines that are strong performances, though the text may become meaningless or entirely changed in meaning. But isn’t that the point? After all, we are not being asked to be theatre directors like you might find at the Traverse or the Citizens. We are directors who belong to the Arches, to the Fringe. We will serve no one because….we don’t have to.
Well, I’ve said that now but I feel strongly that the experiment I did was enriched by a respect for the text. Everything I did I did in service of the text. But I read the text in a way most directors would not, I read it with my right eye only and in my peripheral vision. I didn’t lose sight of it, I just changed how I looked at it. And for some that felt like losing sight. And that is the experiment.
I look forward to the next one to see where the experiment takes another batch of artists. I hope that like this recent event those taking part are not theatre makers normally, because the physical and visual texts were dynamic, unexpected and valuable.
Hi Amanda
This could continue ad infinitum so will be brief!
I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog and your perspectives on the Crossing the Lines event (which I’m just sorry I couldn’t be at – it sounds, by many mouths, like a really interesting event).
I think audiences are constantly doing their “own making” – the form of this engagement differs of course, but I believe that by being in the audience and synthesising all the elements of a production together, a theatre audience is always doing this work. Needless to say, it’s great to have artists engaged in many different ways of doing this, and of pushing the boundaries of what that means, which is why this event sounds great.
I wonder if, in a way, it’s a red herring to set up the text and the director in opposition to one another (the ‘using’ versus ‘being used’), as I feel in a good partnership they are working positively together.
I would also say that how much the work serves a contract, vs. how much freedom and creative conversations are afforded, depends very much on both the ethos of a venue and the individual creative team, and that it’s not always apparent from outside any individual creative process what the risks were and where they were taken.
With a bit of luck I’ll get along to the next event and get a chance to have a proper chat with you about your work. In the meantime, hope all goes well!
Louise
@wearemagpie
Hello Louise,
Thank you for reading the blog and especially for responding to these thoughts. It’s always a worthwhile conversation, particularly with a professional in the sector. I will try to remember to email you personally when I find out the date of the next “Crossing the Lines.”
With regard to the first point, about the relationship between the written text and the performance text…I suggested that the visual and physical elements do not always engage the text or serve the text. By not engaging the text I might describe the first performance from Tuesday’s “Crossing the Lines.” “Peepshow” by Isabel Wright was the play from which the text was taken. Here, however, the text was projected onto the backwall – it was not spoken, it was not referred to verbally, the performers did not point to the text or mime what was happening as indicated in the text. The two were only related in that the projected text from the play was made to look like silent film placards while the performers were dressed as though they were in a silent film. But their actions, the storyline (as such as it was) was not based on or related to the text in any conceivable way. Whatever connections did exist were purely of the audience’s own making. The idea for this staging was not prompted by the text, that is, this obvious disconnect between the written and performance scripts is not a theme or question present in the play.
This idea that a performance text might not serve a text is exemplified by Paul Henry’s piece, a staging of the very sparse short play “What Do We Do Next” from Kieran Lynn. Although I thought this an excellent presentation/interpretation of Lynn’s text Henry was the first to say it was his concern with ‘the void,’ and questions of mortality that drove the staging. The text was placed into this context instead of the text inspiring the context.
You’ve rightly pointed out that even an opposition to a text is engagement and I have seen this exemplified at “Crossing the Lines” and elsewhere. In many ways this serves the text by heightening the degree to which the audience must listen to hear it despite the noise of what they see keeping that from being a straightforward task. But certainly what is emerging from these events is that the participating artists are taking this as an opportunity to use text to their own ends, instead of using their ends to serve the text.
I believe that a director can put the performance text in a dialogue with the written text or the two can happen at once as monologues – I saw that on Tuesday but worryingly I see that on main stages where the director hasn’t been able to illuminate the text and so dressed it up in a corresponding set. Does that make sense?
Right, the next set of questions gets me really excited!
I didn’t mean that by virtue of being at The Arches, which is on the periphery of normative practice that I don’t serve anyone. There is certainly an audience. An intelligent, hungry and dynamic one, in my experience. However, what I meant was that I don’t serve anyone when I make work. It happens to be experimental. It happens to be what you might find on the fringe. It speaks in languages found across performance disciplines. But it is not created in the service of anyone or anything other than my own….pathos.
I hope you’re right that there are directors who work successfully across the divides that seemingly separate Arches audiences from more mainstream audiences (this isn’t even accounting for commercial audiences!) In fact, I’d like to be one of them. But I should think that what I do in each venue is particular to the venue – that is, with the exception of the Arches which has never stipulated the nature of my work. Largely that is because it doens’t fund the artists involved – though some do get funding and residencies and these are also examples of the Arches breaking the mould in the kind of work they support. BUT by and large they can ask only so much when the exchange is a money-less one. However, at a more mainstream theatre there is cash at stake and so the exchange is a promise of return. There is a contract and the work is made to serve that contract.
This does not always result in an artistic compromise or sacrifice. Frequently the work is dynamic, interesting, and does not suffer for its accessibility of by fulfilling the remit the producing house has laid out for it. But I don’t think it is as risky, or as free to be risky, as work produced at the Arches.
There are exceptions, of course. The NTS’s recent Knives In Hens was a risk, big time and for my money it paid off. Not because it was perfect and stayed true to Harrower’s play despite it’s continental flavour, but because it was risky. And in being risky it didn’t seem to be serving anyone but the impulses, interests and ambitions of the artists themselves.
Let me know your thoughts on this. I am always open to critique. My hypocrisies are abounding. But the relationship that artists at my level have to the establishment is fraught with questions. And I always enjoy bashing them out. Yes, I aspire to advance, but never abandon the freedom risk affords.
Best,
Amanda
Hello again Amanda
I’m sad that I missed the event (again!)
I found a couple of your statements really interesting, so hope you don’t mind me opening a bit of conversation about them.
“the performance text (the physical, visual elements) are not always related to and certainly do not always serve the literary text”
Are not all the elements suggested by engagement with the literary text to some degree? Even if it is just to oppose the obvious interpretation, say? If not, where do they come from?
“we are not being asked to be theatre directors like you might find at the Traverse or the Citizens. We are directors who belong to the Arches, to the Fringe. We will serve no one because….we don’t have to”
I’m not sure that I would agree that you are not serving anyone because you are working in a venue which has an emphasis on experimental work. You said, for example, that you ‘belong’ at the arches and at the fringe. How about the audience at that venue: do you not feel as a theatre practitioner that you, by creating work that is staged at that venue, serve them? I know a number of directors who successfully work across these divides: are they serving only themselves when they work at the arches, and only something or someone else if they work at the Citz, or is it a matter of working in venues and spaces which are appropriate to a particular audience?
Interested to hear what you think, so drop me a comment back here or via email if better!
Bye for now,
Louise
@wearemagpie