What do I mean? I’m picking up some threads of things coming together for me based on some theatre experiences recently which have danced around with the definitions of Theatre and Fine Art. But are not ‘Live Art’. Live Art is another thing in my mind – and much less connected to the practice and crafts involved in theatre making and more close to being an area of Fine Art but with liveness / people..? My definition anyway. I don’t have many examples in my experience (but am glad to be corrected) of Live Art taking responsibility for it’s audience with any kind of care or skill. Massive generalisation but that’s my experience.
Two shows I saw recently that made me sit up. ‘Matter Era’ at the Battersea Art Centre – an experimental London venue where I cut my teeth as a messy theatre maker. Matter Era was technically a puppetry show, object animation being the preferred term here – but the craft I’m referring to is the skill of the Puppeteers. Who remained invisible beneath the metal stage, moving the objects around with magnets. And most interestingly they couldn’t SEE what they were doing. Unless there was some kind of live video feed – perhaps – but still the element of surprise and jeopardy that you would get in an improvised show – as because without a direct manipulation the objects would sometimes fall out of their control. And that became story – because the audience as in any improvised piece – were complicit in that story. Being more knowledgable about what was going on above the Puppeteers (famously shy folk so there’s something rather lovely about them hiding below with magnets and anonymity).
Above or On stage – an ethereal wild world of dreams where objects (thinking of Jane Bennet’s book Vibrant Matter) had agency. None of the objects were realistic or recognisable – sort of like twigs, sort of like fur, sort of like fat blueberries covered in oil. But all with some kind of recognisable quality we can attach a feeling to. There was so much space for the audience – which is exactly what I want to deal with – and it was just beautiful.
I also want to speak about my friend Tim Crouch’s work. Tim is an extraordinary theatre-maker – after Caryl Churchill I would say he is the most significant experimental theatre writer at work today. What I went to see was him in actor-mode rather than his own work – but his take on ‘The Tempest’ at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse was absolutely in line with his tireless experimentation with the form. His Prospero (who is normally cited as the Shakespearean hero connected with the idea of forgiveness) as I saw it was not moving on in forgiveness but more like real life was playing over his wrongs and how to right them over and over on a loop. He broke many of the rules of theatre – it was quite slow (I felt mesmerically but he definitely tests this patience) and it didn’t really end or conclude but rather looped back round again.
Got to speak about his play ‘An Oak Tree’. Inspired by artist Craig Martin’s work that self-declared that the glass of water exhibited on a high shelf was in fact ‘An Oak Tree’. Martin says on the Tate website –
“The Oak Tree was meant to be ‘how do I create the maximum imaginable transformation?’ and my way of doing it was to produce no transformation at all.”
In Tim’s namesake play the second actor has never seen the script before. So their reading of the grieving father they’re playing is loaded with confusion and those strange blanks and interrupted thought that anyone who has experienced grief can probably recognise.
Tim says –
‘I take responsibility for how audience receive my work’
This is really speaking to me right now as I reconsider what kind of work I really want to make.
As the two disciplines creep towards each other and cross over and meet and join up and speak to each other…
I want to think more about what it really feels like to be on the receiving end of my work. I can take responsibility for that.
Alex Murdoch, Artist 