Reflective Participant: Participation Round Table Discussion at Queen Mary’s

I attended a round table today at Queens Mary’s University London but run by Justin from Switch Theatre. These are my thoughts about the things that were said and how they relate to my own research and processes. The Comments that are bullet pointed are a summary of what was said but the comments in brackets are my own reflection on those discussions and comments.

The artist is also the audience; you’re not a part of it unless you are artist or participant. [This is really interesting because I have always thought about participation the other way round; I think about the audience taking up the role of the artist or practitioner in participatory work rather than the practitioner as taking on the role of the audience too. In Siren Song, I want the audience to take up the role of the creator and collaborate with the performers but if I look at it from this perspective, I am also asking the performers to become audience at certain points and for their collaboration with the audience to be successful they will also have to watch the audience and respond to them. It becomes a truly dynamic relationship, one is reliant upon the others participation and engagement.]

If the audience participate at more than a ‘base-level’ collaboration (by this they are meaning the usual complicity that is required by the nature of theatre and performance) and do take up the role of the creator, then they are changed by their experience. If they participate in a creative way then it becomes a spiritual experience. You go away having had a personal experience; a little changed; a little different (in some cases actually physically and materially different with wounds or body piercings), because you have lived through it. In this way, participation is more than spectating and witnessing-although often both of these activities are undertaken during the course of the participation. [This is what I hope to achieve with Siren Song, not in a physical way as many of the speakers and makers at this event do but in an aesthetic and cultural way. This perspective has been theorised before by academic such as Gay Mc Auley and Herbert Blau but there is little to no material or empirically based evidence to support this perspective. My research is hoping to address this issue- it is about documenting and recording those experiences and conceptualising how and why participation works in the ways that it does; as well as the implications socially, culturally and aesthetically.]

Kiera O’Rielly talked about how she tries to locate her work within the liminal space, the in-between space. [This is really interesting because I would suggest that participation is located within the liminal space but explodes that liminal space through its own manifestation of creative material collaboration between the performers and audience actually explodes the liminal space. The liminal space, with participation becomes the site of something new, it moves beyond the liminal space that it was first created in and forges a new tract. My research will explore and identify this new space that is created through specific participatory practices. I would further suggest that not ALL participation actually starts or is manifest within a liminal space. Panto and Cabaret offers interaction and participation but never allows the audience to cross over into the liminal space; such practices actually highlight the audience/performer divide. It is only very specific instances of participation that happens within the liminal space and offers the potential to explode it and shift into a new tract.]

Kiera also highlighted something that is becoming more and more of an issue for me as I write; what and who are those people that attend such events? (She does not mean what car do they drive or how much do they earn after tax, it is not a question of demographics it is a questions of distinction and definition) What do we call them? Audience, witness, participant, collaborator..? [This is a question that I feel my research is working towards addressing, terms, classifications; I have not yet discovered the correct term but feel that once the performance experiments get into full swing, it is something that I can start to explore.]

There was a discussion about the frustration and possibility of the ‘audience’ not getting it or not performing it right. [For me, the biggest fear is the audience NOT participating. I do not worry about how they participate, as I will be giving them that level of control, just as long as they do engage and take up the role required of them. The structure of Siren Song is such that there will be huge empty spaces or holes if the audience do not participate. I do not agree with a right or wrong way to participate; if you hand the audience the role of co-creator, then you have to accept and run with the material and performance that they generate in that role. It is no different to when you allow actors to do improve, you let them take it and run with it. It is the fear of non-participation that is the driving force behind the opening section of Siren Song, I hope that ti will explicitly show the audience the things that we have been working with and set up the themes and concerns that we would like to address with them to make a piece of work.]

The audience is the work, was a perspective that was shared by most of the speakers at the round table. [I think that this is indeed the crux of the matter for certain types of participation. In panto, the audience are not the work, they are a structured and planned for element of the overall plot and narrative but they are not the work itself. In Siren Song the audience will become both the object and subject and in this way, they are indeed the work, without them there is no work.]

Kiera discussed the concepts of risk and trust in terms of participation. She feels that the audience take the biggest risk in choosing to participate. The artist/performer has more control, they set the game plan and the audience take a risk in trusting them. The audience give themselves over to the artist. [This is something that I have discussed at length in previous entries, in terms of my performers. If the audience are to take up the role of co-creator with the performers, then it is the audience who must invest and who must risk. It is the performer’s task to get them to feel as though they can. In Siren Song, we have set the agenda, we will have decided what games will be played and the themes that we want them to address with us to generate a performance.]

The idea of context came up during the open questions and all of the artists talked about how venue, location and architecture is definitely important to the success of the event; the context will define the audience that it draws and set up the conditions of engagement. They suggest that for people to feel compelled to participate, to invest and take risks, the context must be right. [This really troubles me in terms of my own work. I have discussed my thoughts and fears about venue and context many times and the discussions today have only validated my won thoughts about venue, location and context. I am now utterly convinced that a traditional end on setting will inhibit the audience. This context will mean that the audience will have to be particularly brave to overcome the conventions and connotations of such a space in order to feel that they can cross over into the liminal space. My performers are going to have to work hard to persuade and enable the audience to do this.]