How can I say something important without preaching?

Sarah Weston, 2 October 2012

Participants: Sarah, Austin, Aliki

The fear of being didactic… Vs Desire of wanting to saying something. How to avoid sounding like a manifesto. How to still be a piece of theatre? You feel like ‘I have the answers, listen to me!’ but you know that that isn't great for an audience.

Is solution in storytelling- in creating characters. Honest creation and portrayal of characters- committed to the story and telling a story. Through this authenticity, issues will emerge.

Trust in the audience- you want to say something but no matter how blatantly you say it, you can never decide what the audience thinks. So you have to leave them to it.

The difference between writing a piece of political theatre and reinterpreting previous stories or work into a certain political setting: does this have a different reaction?

Relationship between form and content. Is the key to this in the way the content is presented? Discussed the beauty of different forms, like puppetry and clowning, and how ideas will emerge in a different way. Discussion of Tim Crouch's ‘The Audience’- essentially a four person script, but the form is where the message lies.

Essentially there is no answers- comes from trying and failing and trying again.

Tags:

political theatre, Communication, communication, Didactic theatre, Storytelling, form and content, Political theatre, Actor-Audience, storytelling