OK, OK, I know, a Manifesto? Well it helps me organize my thoughts and spell out what my intentions are, and I’ll try to rise above the art school sophomore rant, or not!
Theatre, has not been able to compete with the TV, Film, and Broadway style of recreation of reality for some time now. Almost 20 years ago I wrote a quite serious manifesto titled THEATRE ABSTRACT MANIFESTO. IT dealt with Theatre’s inability to compete with TV, Film, and Broadway in the recreation of reality. So what was needed from an audience was a more severe sense of “suspension of disbelief”. The Theatre Abstract manifesto called for a deliberate eschewing of reality in Theatre and development of a style that was highly abstract. A creating of a subjective reality in that empty space! Thanks Peter Brook! At the time I blamed the technology and money that was available to TV, Film, and Broadway Theatre, that was unavailable to small Theatre. I used that basic theory for a majority of my productions since 1990. Most of those production were produced in the manner of Fringe Theatre, which comes from a European term for what we’d call Black Box Theatre. I also detested what we used to call “Icting” or overly emotional hand wringing acting style prevalent in most small theatres, you know, yell if you’re mad, cry if you’re sad. I feel the way to avoid that was to not “pretend” because unless one is extremely well trained and extremely talented, it’s gonna fall short.
So my theory developed from that previous manifesto into the one I most recently used on “The Hamletmachine” a few years ago, Just honestly say the line as an actor in the theatre space you occupy NOW! Don’t try to use forced inflection or tricks to manipulate the audience into feeling the emotion you think the author wants to convey.
Overall as a production theory LOCAL THEATRE will simply not be tied down to any preconceived rule or notion of theatre. 4th walls will be broken only to be immediately rebuilt, linear time lines will be thrown out and then re-established, actors will break character in mid sentence. Technology such as video, audio, lighting, sets, etc. will be used as an additional character or theatrical device not just to augment the action but to convey it. If a character needs to speak, it may be a disembodied voice or a talking head on a screen, or Hamlet will be portrayed by a chair, Juliet by a dust mop. Develop a hybrid of audience acknowledgement and participation and the Brechtian über fourth wall. The infusion of conceptual art technique lends me to call this Conceptual Theatre. The audience will be required to embrace the concept as opposed to the reality of the storytelling. As Tom Waits once said: “It aint theatre if you don’t fuck with time.”
I hope my ranting has either confused you or intrigued you, to the point you’ll be compelled to come view the future works of LOCAL THEATRE
