Delight (what delights us in theatre)

Convener(s): Alex Scott

Participants: Unrecorded

Summary of discussion, conclusions and/or recommendations:

This was a positive, exciting conversation from which we have created a list of delights!...

• Shameless theatricality
• Surprises

• changes of scale
• unexpected skills

• Real, unpredictable things on stage, the possibility of error, actors overcoming danger

• dogs
• cooking
• children

• Accidents that are incorporated.
• Naughtiness
• A show that is advertised as being ticketed, but when you arrive at the box office it is free.
• Swordfights (and pirates).
• Gifts for the audience (material and metaphorical, all the action is ‘for’ them)
• Switching roles

• ugly people made pretty, pretty made ugly.
• Serious people made silly and vice versa.
• Moments that are unafraid of being obvious.
• Dry ice (not smoke)
• Stage magic (star cloths, fairy lights, trap doors, secrets)
• Science experiments, explosions, things/people on fire.
• Childhood dreams being performed (sliding down stairs on a mattress etc.)
• Playing
• Improvisation
• Excess (of anything e.g. a thousand balloons falling)
• Spectacle
• Water
• Mess
• Displays of skill (precision, apparently superhuman skills)
• Lack of skill for comic effect
• Obvious effort
• An experience that starts at the door of the theatre
• Recklessness/inappropriate actions
• Performers who include the audience in their own delight at performing.
• Being on someone’s side
• Being won over by a character
• Silliness
• Villains
• Tiny details
• The feeling that you are being shown a secret
• Honesty of trickery (seeing how things are made)
• Visible creativity- seeing something made from nothing
• Object manipulation
• Structure
• Getting lost