20.
24-hour rolling theatre is not a new idea, but as far as I know it’s not been tried for any sustained period. The closest conceptual relation in recent years has probably been Brian Eno’s Civic Recovery Centre, which anyway has only been fleetingly realised, but the presence of actors in the model I’m describing seems to me crucial. Practical obstacles abound so if we have to treat this merely as a thought experiment then, OK, fine, whatever. But see what this does? Everything is improvised, or prepared in the same space that it’s shown and in the same full view. The freighted prestige of the actor within the apparatus of the theatre production is destroyed; the role of the director changes, the role of the writer, the designer, the musician, is folded into the live unit. Nobody mistakes this theatre for a kind of literature. Our current marketing apparatus becomes sublimely redundant. The relationship of the person in the street is not with the individual show, but with theatre itself as a special register of activity, one which simply involves an attentive encounter with others, in a place that’s designed specifically to nurture it.
Showing posts with label actors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label actors. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
19.
In this dream there is a building to which you have free, unticketed access, day and night. At the heart of this building is a room, where you can sit, or stand, or lie, for as long as you want, in the company of others, or sometimes, it might so happen, on your own. This room also contains one or more actors. That’s the word we use to describe them. They’re not there to perform. They’re there simply to act, to act on behalf of the others who are gathered there, to make actions, to commit themselves to various kinds of activity. You might pop in for ten minutes on your lunchbreak and watch two men in blindfolds slowdancing. You might pop in for an hour after work instead of going to the gym, and watch five people build a model of Mumbai out of donated car parts. On the evening after your cat dies you might stay up all night with a woman you’ve never met before listening as she tells you a seemingly endless story about an old man who steals a motorbike and rides across the desert. You might spend twenty-one minutes thirty seconds watching a stranger stand naked in the light, and stop worrying about your unpayable gas bill.
In this dream there is a building to which you have free, unticketed access, day and night. At the heart of this building is a room, where you can sit, or stand, or lie, for as long as you want, in the company of others, or sometimes, it might so happen, on your own. This room also contains one or more actors. That’s the word we use to describe them. They’re not there to perform. They’re there simply to act, to act on behalf of the others who are gathered there, to make actions, to commit themselves to various kinds of activity. You might pop in for ten minutes on your lunchbreak and watch two men in blindfolds slowdancing. You might pop in for an hour after work instead of going to the gym, and watch five people build a model of Mumbai out of donated car parts. On the evening after your cat dies you might stay up all night with a woman you’ve never met before listening as she tells you a seemingly endless story about an old man who steals a motorbike and rides across the desert. You might spend twenty-one minutes thirty seconds watching a stranger stand naked in the light, and stop worrying about your unpayable gas bill.
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