Reflective practitioner: Vex and Siren Song

These artistic aims were discussed and set down in 1995, when VEX was first founded by my partner, Nigel Tuttle and myself. They are the principles that underpin all of the artistic activity that the group undertakes. I want to discuss and consider those policies in relation to my research concerns and Siren Song in 3 Parts.

Vertical Exchange is not interested in operating within the codes and conventions of drama per se but instead the group is concerned with bringing the ‘mundane’ and ‘everyday’ practices into a performative arena in order to explore themes, issues and topics that interest the group but that we hope will also have wider significance and interest. I am interested in looking at domesticity, the female body, fetishized female images, tasks, social rituals and the notion of the party-public and private space. Nigel is interested in mythology, organised religion and their rituals and narrative structures.

VEX operates and develops ‘postdramatic’ and ‘non-literary’ performances strategies. This is significant for my research because if the contract between the performers and audience is to be shifted, then as I have previously suggested, the Cartesian relationships and divides of the theatre and more specifically the modern drama cannot accommodate the exploding of the liminal space that this shift appears to require. By employing pomo, postdramatic and performance based techniques the contract, the relationship between work – performer – audience can be re-imagined.

In this way, Siren Song, as well as being the PaR activity of my PhD, is also the next step in VEX’s experiments with form and function. The artistic aims and research aims have to be one and the same, the objective for the practice to be understood as research means that the objective of both elements has to be singular. That is not to say that each and every decision taken along the way during the making of Siren song will be exercised and conceptualised, such as decisions on the colour of the paint for the boxes, however, all of those decisions will be made with the intention of fulfilling the master creative and research objectives.

My research is concerned with participatory performance and finding ways of understanding what it means to be participatory and how this affects the role of the audience. From my research to date, and the performative experiments that I have undertaken through VEX, I have started to outline what I understand to be the varying degrees of collaboration and participation. These are only provisional but serve as a useful starting point for both the practice and more traditional research activity.

The Basic Thesis

I believe that all Western theatrical audiences are collaborative and that this understanding of that position is essential in order to designate an event as theatre. I believe that theatre requires the audience to take up this role in order to fulfil its aesthetic, social and cultural function. It is the audience’s role as collaborator that marks out theatre from the other visual art disciplines such as film, television and art.

I believe that the commonly used terms to discuss and conceptualise the audience like reader and spectator are deeply problematic and do not account for the phenomenological experience specific to and that make up the theatrical event. These widely used terms do not full account for the phenomenon of presence and liveness that is manifest at any theatrical event.

I believe that certain Western contemporary theatrical practices which could be understood as participatory explode the liminal space and create a democratic space, where performers and audience exist in the same role; the performer/audience divide is eliminated and both exist in this democratic space as creators. This new space blurs the traditional separation of the roles of performer and audience to create a new space and demands the re-thinking of those roles and their wider theoretical and aesthetic implications.


Consuming Collaborator

In most mainstream theatre, I believe that the audience can be understood as a consuming collaborator. The audiences’ presence is required in order to make up the theatrical event. The audience does not read at the theatrical event, they experience it; they are phenomenological embedded into the very make up of the theatrical event. Placing the audience in the role of reader or spectator implies a certain level of objectivity that I want to suggest is problematic when one is implicated in the event at such a fundamental level. The audience is an essential ingredient for theatre to be manifest as such and thus it is difficult to then suggest that they can step aside and repress or deny their phenomenological involvement.

Although they are an element that makes up the theatrical event, they have no control or creative input into the artistic element of the event. They have no creative control and their presence, material and cerebral, does not fundamentally affect the artistic intentions or output. They collaborate in the event as consumers of the artistic activity of performers/practitioners/directors/artists. They are collaborators at the event but not in the creative processes that happen before the event. The role of consuming collaborator is not a passive one; the act of consuming requires activity and choice, the audience do not simply receive the event.

The audience is part of the event and makes choices during that event that affects their experience of that event. During the theatre event, even the most Cartesian, the audience has a plenitude of choices on offer; however, these choices do not directly affect the actual work itself. There is still a separation that exists, marking the difference between creator and audience. The consuming collaborator completes the meaning but they do not create it. The performers offer up the work and the audience choose how and what they experience and ultimately what that experience means to them. The audience takes part in the event and collaborate in bringing it into being but they have no control over the event that they are completing. The audience is given a false position of power; they are implicated in bringing the theatre event into being but cannot share in the responsibility for it fully as they have no real power over their relationship with the creative work itself.


Participatory Theatre

Participatory theatre is manifest when the audience/Performer divide is crossed or breeched in some way. It is when the liminal space is problematised and destabilised by a change in the audiences’ role of consuming collaborator. It can be understood as a theatrical event where the audience is asked to step across the liminal space and partake in the event in such a way that they are involved in the event in a way that their presence takes on a role which requires them to do more than make up the theatrical event. Participation is when the audience is required to become involved with either/or the construction/presentation of the work itself. Participation in this way does not automatically imply that the audience is granted creatorly powers or even performer status, there are different types of participation and each has its own implications on the audience’s role.


Creatorly Participants

In much contemporary work, some of which might be understood to fall within the category of Postdramatic, the audience is required to shift their role from consuming collaborator to that of a creatorly participant (although the audience is always a collaborator at the level by which they are necessary to complete the theatrical event). In much contemporary Western work since the early nineteen eighties, (Forced Entertainment, Lone Twin, Imitating the Dog etc), the audience is not required to actually participate on a material level, they often remain seated in the usual Cartesian stage/auditorium divide, however, they are required to participate cerebrally. They are required to take a more fundamental role in the construction of the work than that of the consuming collaborator. Rather than simply applying choice in their relationship to the work, they are required to participate in the construction of the work. Some of the creative responsibility is passed over to the audience, not only do they have to complete the meaning of the event but they also have the responsibility of making it. The work leaves holes, gaps and spaces that the audience are invited to fill; they have to construct and complete the work, which is not offered to them as a whole. The audience has to cross the liminal space cerebrally and creatively contribute to the work. They are responsible for mediating their own relationship to the fragments on offer and enact their own creative involvement with what is partially offered.

This type of work problematises the audience/performer divide and implicates the audience at the production level; it opens the door to the creative processes of the event that usually hidden and out of bounds to the audience. They are given more control of their relationship with the work and thus more control over the experience that they are part of. The role of creatorly participation, as with the role of consuming collaborator does not impact on the material event itself or the material experience of others; it is private and personal participation.

Although this type of work highlights its creative processes, devolving some of the creative responsibility to the audience, it does not fully relinquish the relationships that it lays bare. It challenges the traditional divides and relationships that they produce from within those devices themselves; this type of work never fully breaks free from that which it seeks to challenge. This in turn means that the audience never fully break away from their traditional role either. This work never fully democratises the audience but tantalisingly reveals the possibility for a radical shift in the audience’s role. It reveals the possibility of exploding liminal space and hints at the possibility for empowering the audience as equal creative forces putting them in the same role as the performer.


Active Material Collaborator

Physical participation does not necessarily infer that the audience had been given any creative responsibility. In theatrical events such as the Pantomime and Cabaret, I want to suggest that the audience’s role is fundamentally similar to that of the consuming collaborator. Although the active material collaborator affects the material experience of the audience and the ‘presentation’ of the creative work, I want to suggest that typically they have no creative control or input. I further want to suggest that this type of participation is built into the work and is used as a dramaturgical device and is as much a part of the mis-en-scene as the lighting and set. The audience participation is used to complete the manifestation of the work not to generate or create it. The audience have the choice whether or not to be involved in the action but they have no freedom to participate in the creative processes as by this stage it is already complete. This type of participation draws attention to the processes of looking and the audience/performer relationship but makes not steps towards altering or undermining it, if any thing this level of participation strengthens the separation.


Material Creatorly Participant

I want to suggest that in some particular new and experimental work, the audience is being asked to partake in the theatrical event at the fundamental level of creative production and that I believe that this work poses radical implications for the role of the audience in Western contemporary theatre. In this new work, the work itself is not manifest as such until the audiences’ participation has occurred. The audience are required to generate the work. The work is not partial in the way that much of Forced Entertainment work is but it is actually non-existent until the actually event when both audience and performer work together to create it. The audience’s participation directly generates the work and thus also directly affects the other audience members material experience of the work that they are creating. In such work, it is no longer a private participation but a public and ensemble affair.

This level of participation completely explodes the liminal space and creates a new space that is democratises; a creative coalescent tract replaces liminal space. The audience become responsible for all aspects of the theatrical event and share this responsibility with the performers. In such work, their role is no longer fixed but fluid and dynamic both audience and performers shifting between roles in a constant, negotiated flux. The audience becomes a material creatorly participatory force and it becomes difficult to separate out the traditional roles of the theatrical event. The audience no longer consumes but creates.

VEX’s work to date, falls within the category of putting its audience ion the role of the ‘creatorly participant’ and to some extent we have also made attempts to place the audience in the role of the ‘material creatorly participant’. Our artistic policy clearly articulates a desire to achieve the latter of the two. My research also aims to locate and explicate the audience in the role of the ‘material creatorly participant’. So it is clear that my artistic and scholarly objectives are one and the same.

Thus I am going to need to develop performance strategies that seek to locate the audience in the role of creatorly participant. I intend to do this by:

-Looking at my past projects and experiments with VEX, to seek out elements that have been successful on previous occasions at locating the audience in the role.

-Looking at the work of other practitioners within this arena of performance to identify and explicate effective strategies and devices that they apply to their participatory work.

-Use a lab style work shop rehearsal structure to devise and explore participatory strategies.

-Through scholarly activity, reading, attending conferences, presenting research to my peers and the wider academic community to gain feedback and perspective on the work, as well as attending talks, lectures and seminars.

Working in this way and as part of a research project, places just as much importance on the process as it does on the final product.

Part One: undressing-dressing down
I want to expose all of the mechanics of the process, so costume changes, scene changes and everything else will be done in the full view of the audience, nothing hidden. I want the space to start empty and the performers to set up the space as part of the mis en scene itself. I think that this will be a useful strategy of puncturing the illusion right from the start and will set up the space and relationship with the audience right from the word go. It will force the audience to consider their gaze, the construction of narrative, illusion and performance space and in turn will I hope, make them think about their role as the audience. I do not really know yet exactly how the undressing and dressing will take place, or the inscriptions but I do know what the aim for this section of the work is; that is to introduce and set up for the audience the themes, topics and issues that we want to discuss and explore with them. Unlike in Playback theatre, I do not want the audience’s participation to be haphazard and random, instead I want to engage them in a very distinct and particular discussion- the idea of woman and trauma, woman and body. I want this section to set up the contract, the presentational style and the theme of the piece. I am hoping it will give the performers a chance to really develop their performance personas in relation to the themes. It is an easing in of the audience to the idea of collaboration and participation.

Part Two-telling tales-telling it like it is.
This section is where the audience are first asked to participate in a creatorly fashion. Once we have set down the themes, we will open up the floor to allow them to come and devise with us, to play with us and to share their ideas and thoughts with us. I am not really too sure yet on exactly how this will take place, this is something that we need to explore in the devising process. I do not want to pressure the audience or force their hand; I want to offer them a well marshalled and comfortable environment in which to take up their creative role. It is all about choice, games and play. I am hoping that by setting up the themes, issues and an aesthetic in part one; we will set up the conditions under which the audience can participate. I think there is a strange freedom and comfort in rules. My hope is that the first section will put the audience in the right frame of mind to be creative and mindful of the subject matter and thus inspire them to want to participate.

Part Three-Playing-with you
This final section is another opportunity for the audience to participate, to make choices, to play with us. It is a gift to them for playing with us and a thank you for their ideas. We will be saying, ‘hey, thanks for that…here are some ideas that we have had too…do you wanna see them?’.
Everything that we will devise is done in order to attempt to put the audience in the role of the creatorly participant. I really need to have a think about the ways in which I might be able to record and document those experiences