25.

Why do we only ever hear about the loftiest aspirations of theatre organizations when they find themselves faced with closure? Why does it take a crisis to make us reach beyond the language of marketing for a kind of diction that breathes civic oxygen? Signal to Noise was born into, and in opposition to, a British theatre culture that was too cool for political ardour, too in love with its cynicism to actually dare to want something. We instinctively understood what Zizek now reminds us: that a thrall to irony signals not a diminution of feeling, but a fear of the vertiginous depth and cultural urgency of that feeling; an unwillingness to face up to the terror of wanting. Back in the day we talked about sincerity, not realizing that Blair and Bush would attempt to legitimise their psychotic criminality in exactly those terms. So now we talk about desire, about wanting desire, trusting it, the thing behind the thing. When irony is complacent and cowardly, and sincerity is toxic, our want, our naked fessed-up want, is a tender, humane refusal of both. Theatre, then, because we need a public place where we can deeply care about what we want.

3.
In this dream, it’s 2010 and I’m not even a dog. I’m just a theatre maker. We are in a theatre. In fact we’re in this theatre, and it’s now, and we’re actually here, and it’s not even a dream. What does it smell like? Nothing in particular. // We’ve been in exile. For a while, theatre wasn’t very welcome here. Having found itself, perhaps somewhat unwittingly, in a coalition with new media arts, it had allowed itself to appear to some people to stand for nothing in particular. It was a sector described as lacking “depth and cultural urgency”, and we were duly outraged. Some of us said we never wanted to come here in the first place, and some of us felt that the relevant powers wouldn’t be able to pick out depth and cultural urgency in a line-up of six items or less. But didn’t it, come on, didn’t it slightly feel like a punishment? And didn’t we go off that night and see a performance somewhere and secretly think, hm, that was actually kind of lacking in depth and cultural urgency? Didn’t we worry a bit about our own work? Didn’t it feel just a little bit like a punishment? Wasn’t there a moment of feeling caught out?