One-on-one theatre: Who’s in charge here

Convener(s): Benjamin Luke 

Participants: Beccy Owens, Nick Rutherford, Gregor Henderson-Begg, Michelle Owoo, Rosaline White, Amy Powell-Yeats, Emily Kempson, Becki Haines, Nick Coupe, Philippa Wilkinson

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

Rules of the game

Can we make a performance where the audience member decides the rules? How could this work?

• A place of the audience member’s choice. Come and cook in my kitchen…
• Or a topic, subject matter? I would like you to cook X for me
• Stimulus decided by the audience? My favourite color is X, my favourite song is Y, I would like to travel to Z. Make me a meal based on that.

Live Art Speed Dating

Developed through a need to facilitate an audience/artist creative response

Rules of the game #2

We need a certain framework to allow the audience member to interact and challenge the artist, while maintaining a structure.

24 hour-death match: A good example of a reciprocal structure whereby a framework is created that allows the participant to be both an audience member and an artist (or to experience being dominant and recessive)

Ontroereud Goed

A long discussion on the reactions of Internal. Brought up a lot of subsequent issues:

After care

Do we have a responsibility to ensure the health of the participant afterwards if they are particularly traumatized?

This moved on to a discussion of children’s theatre. If a parent complains about a child being scared at a show, what are the ethical implications? We can’t be scared of offending people, we wouldn’t put on a show!

Man up! People like being challenged!

What one-on-one theatre might present is a perfect expression of what we want to do as artists: trust people to understand their responses and learn from them.

Ethical responsibility

What was ethically problematic in Internal? The trust that you put in the performer was taken advantage of. Does this matter? It’s a show about ethics!

Warning people

How can we warn people against the content in the show? Should it be explicit – a contract, a sign etc, or implicit – through marketing etc?