Thursday 24 June

The Digital Democracy

The desire to reconfigure the relationship between theatre and audience has been a recurring theme in experimental theatre practice for decades. Catalysed by a new generation of theatre makers for whom gaming and the associated digital interactivity is the norm, we now see the development of theatre based on the idea of public play and playfulness where adults are encouraged to shed their grown-up characters and to have straightforwardly silly fun.

This work is often a hybrid of old and new genres, combining homespun and digital forms of interactivity. It is interesting that a parallel and deliberately low-tech theatre practice has developed at the same time as theatre makers are embracing digital technology and that the two, rather than being mutually exclusive, have a symbiotic relationship. Is the connection simply one of interactivity, or of play?

Digital interactivity has also allowed for a massive rise in the use of public contributions in the making of a piece of theatre. They may determine the events being played out on stage, alter the outcome or direct the performers but user-generated content provides for a situation where the “ordinary” theatregoer with no professional stake in the piece of work is now on a par with the professional theatre makers. Interestingly for an art form constantly looking for new audiences and fighting a rearguard action against multiplying calls on people’s leisure time, theatre makers have traditionally been very reluctant to confer ownership on non-professional participants. Theatre the only art form that has such rigid boundaries between amateur and professional-dance is influenced by street dance, music by community choirs and talent shows, television by fans-for example Lost is now written by fans of the earlier series. Is user-generated content the way, finally, to break down the amateur professional divide?

Chaired by journalist and Artistic Director of the ICA, Ekow Eshun, with speakers including Charlie Tims from Demos, we ask whether we are all theatre makers now. Have the gaming generation and the DIY ethos produced democratic theatre?

 

Thursday 1 July

The Epic and the Intimate:

Audiences are perhaps becoming suspicious of the formality of traditional theatre: the silent watching, the inability to interact with what is on stage, the expected applause at the end. Intimate or immersive work seems by contrast to allow the audience to own and edit the narrative, to create an experience, a journey, rather than an event.

In recent years we have seen a proliferation of intimate, one-on-one encounters such as Adrian Howells’ “Foot washing for the Sole” as well as immersive events like those created so successfully by Punchdrunk. With immersive theatre, the audience may experience it alone or in groups but it encourages a sense of exploration, a feeling in its audience that they are curating their own experience in their own time, in an order that they choose.

 

However such intimate theatre is asking the audience to be quite vulnerable, to risk potential embarrassment or, by virtue of making the “wrong” choices, an unfulfilling experience; is there a danger that will limit the audience to the moneyed and confident? Furthermore, as the spectre of public funding cuts looms, is this type of work financially sustainable; is it value for the public’s money? Chaired by Guardian theatre critic Lyn Gardner, we examine whether the power and value of theatre is intrinsically linked to the spectacular and collective moment or whether it can be just as powerful experienced alone?

 

Thursday 8 July

The Climate for Theatre

As theatre makers struggle to create the iconic work about climate change, should they borrow the models of local activism practiced by the anti-globalisation movement? Can theatre that inspires change by virtue of its rootedness in real life concerns also connect and inspire on an international stage?

Chaired by Chris Smith, previously Secretary of State for Culture and now Chairman of the Environment Agency, and with speakers including John Jordan, artist and activist and author of “We Are Everywhere”, this debate examines theatre makers’ attitudes to environmental concerns. Why, unlike AIDS, the conflict between Israel and Palestine or even the global financial crisis, has climate change not inspired a potentially attitude-shifting piece of theatre? Films and literature have tackled the subject through fiction and polemic; where is the theatrical equivalent?

But is there actually a need for a catalyst, a great inspirational moment, or should we just continue at a local level, building from the grassroots up and up? As climate change activists deal with the failure of the Copenhagen talks last year, there is a move away from global mobilisation towards specific and local targets such as particular fossil-fuel power plants or mines, focusing more on local grassroots campaigns, “to start from the bottom” as the Rising Tide spokesman puts it.

Should theatre makers take a leaf from the activists’ book and think local? As a subject that touches the daily business of life, is it more appropriate that theatre that addresses climate change and the need for action should itself be created in a local and practical context, intimately connected to its audience or participants’ daily life?

 

Thursday 15 July

Theatre from the Arab World

While populations in the West are diminishing and ageing, the Arab world has a young population that is growing swiftly.

It is clear that much work being created by the young generation of theatre artists is defiant, provocative and confrontational within Arab culture. What is their relationship to tradition, religion and their local culture and how do they see themselves and their culture being represented elsewhere in the world?

Chaired by Deborah Shaw, Associate Director at the Royal Shakespeare Company, with speakers including Lotfi Achour of Tunisian multimedia group Artistes Producteurs Associés, we ask how young theatre makers from the region identify themselves; do they see their futures as theatre makers in their own countries or elsewhere and are they being forced into a westernised cultural shape?

Many of the same questions currently being posed by British theatre makers feel even more resonant in the context of the Arab world: can technology, and particularly social networking technology, enable different ways of making and disseminating their work? Does the contribution of oil to the region’s economies make the issue of climate change, and theatre’s potential response to it, feel redundant or even more urgent? As LIFT begins its focus on theatre from this often misrepresented region, can a new generation of theatre makers give us a more nuanced understanding of their diverse and complex cultures?

 

Tickets for all discussions are £5, and are available now from the ICA website.