The LIFT talks
We would all recognise that over the last decade, with very widespread access to the internet, the way we conduct our social lives and the way we consume goods and services has changed out of all recognition. With the technical tools to tailor and personalise all our social and cultural experiences, do we still have the inclination or capacity to surrender to someone else’s vision of the world? Using the communication methods of political activists, the technological expertise of gamers and content created by everyone, artists are completely changing how theatre is made and seen. In collaboration with the ICA and Artsadmin, the LIFT club is presenting four opportunities to explore our new relationship with theatre in the company of international theatre makers, critics and commentators.
Thursday 24 June 15.30 - 17.30
£5 / £4 ICA Members plus + £1.20 booking fee per ticket in advance
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 is 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 LIFT’s Artistic Director Mark Ball, with speakers including Wired’s Associate Editor and Hide&Seek collaborator Margaret Robertson, Blast Theory’s founder Matt Adams, Charlie Tims of the thinktank DEMOS and Sydney Thornbury, Executive Director of WebPlay we ask whether we are all theatre makers now. Has the gaming generation and the DIY ethos produced more democratic theatre?
The Digital Democracy LIFTtalks 2010 by LIFTfestival
Recording courtesy of the British Library © The British Library Board, 2010
Thursday 1 July 15.30 - 17.30
£5 / £4 ICA Members plus + £1.20 booking fee per ticket in advance
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, with Dries Verhoeven, Adrian Howells, David Jubb, Helen Marriage and Deborah Warner. 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?
The Epic and The Intimate LIFT talks 2010 by LIFTfestival
Recording courtesy of the British Library © The British Library Board, 2010
£5 / £4 ICA Members plus + £1.20 booking fee per ticket in advance
The Climate for Theatre in association with Artsadmin, chaired by Chris Smith
Thursday 8 July
3.30pm
£5 / £4 ICA Members plus + £1.20 booking fee per ticket in advance
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?
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?
Speakers
Heather Ackroyd has collaborated extensively with artist Dan Harvey, often working with natural processes such as growing grass. Their art embraces site specific installation, sculpture, landscape design, photography and performance film. Heather and Dan's major work, Stranded, was created for the Cape Farewell exhibition Art & Climate Change. In 2007 Heather and Dan createdFlyTower, on the National Theatre’s Lyttleton flytower. They have been recipients of numerous awards including two RSA Art For Architecture awards, Wellcome Sci-Art, NESTA Pioneering Award and the L'Oreal Art & Science of Colour Prize. Heather is a Trustee of Tipping Point, an organisation that explores the role artists can play in understanding and interpreting climate change.
Pippa Bailey is a freelance producer and director working across a range of disciplines. In 2008 she produced the opening event for the launch of the Cultural Olympiad in Dover, produced the Total Theatre Awards at the Edinburgh Fringe, and participated in Mobile Lab, a team of 25 critics and commentators exploring theatre criticism across 10 European Festivals. Having spent her early career in Australia, Pippa came to the UK in 1998 to work as Artistic Associate on The Museum Of, a series of temporary museums on the South Bank. She then became Artistic Director at Oxford House. She now acts as a consultant, is an Associate Director for The World Famous, a company of innovative pyrotechnicians, and is currently producing Biding Time, a large international participatory project imagined in response to the wider implications of economic and environmental disaster.
John Jordan is artist and activist who spends his time trying to find a space where the imagination of art and the social engagement of politics can be brought together. For 10 years he was a co-director of Platform, an art and social science group, and also worked on a social art project about men and pornography. Since 1994 he has worked in the direct action movements, principally with Reclaim the Streets. He has written and lectured extensively about the anticapitalist movement and was a senior lecturer in fine art at Sheffield Hallam University. As a member of the Notes From Nowhere collective he co-edited We Are Everywhere: the irresistible rise of global capitalism.
Steve Waters is a playwright whose recent plays include Fast Labour (West Yorkshire Playhouse and Hampstead Theatre) and The Contingency Plan (The Bush Theatre). His plays have also been staged at venues such as the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, Hampstead Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse. He is Lecturer in Playwriting at the University of Birmingham and has given papers on ecology and theatre amongst other subjects. He recently co-wrote a ‘Writ Large’, a report on the condition of playwriting in British theatre for Arts Council England (forthcoming). He is currently writing a book on playwriting for Nick Hern Books called The Secret Life of Plays and editing a forthcoming edition of Contemporary Theatre Review on ‘Teaching Playwriting’.
Chair
Chris Smith is Chairman of the Environment Agency, which protects and improves the environment and promotes sustainable development. He is former Director of the Clore Leadership Programme, which aims to help develop a new generation of leaders for the cultural sector in the UK. In 1997 he became Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, and Chairman of the Millennium Commission. He stood down from the House of Commons in 2005. Immediately afterwards he was created a life peer, taking the title of Lord Smith of Finsbury, and took his seat in the House of Lords in July 2005. He is a Visiting Professor in Culture and the Creative Industries at the University of the Arts London; Chairman of the Advertising Standards Authority, the Wordsworth Trust and the Donmar Warehouse; a Member of the Board of the National Theatre; and is on the Advisory Council of the London Symphony Orchestra. His publications include Suicide of the West with Richard Koch, published by Continuum.
Climate For Theatre LIFTtalks 2010 by LIFTfestival
Recording courtesy of the British Library © The British Library Board, 2010
10 July
LIFT Club: An Open Space Event
Hosted by Mark Ball and facilitated by Phelim McDermott
2-5pm
ICA Theatre
Free entry; reserve a place through the ICA
As theatre audiences and practitioners, how should we be international?
Please join me to explore this vital question and share your thoughts and your own questions. For instance, I want to ask: in an international context, is technology is collapsing distance? What are our responsibilities to the global environment? And what issues do you want to talk about on the themes of theatre and internationalism?
Join myself and Phelim McDermott of Improbablefor an Open Space event. Pioneered in the UK arts world by Improbable (through their Devoted & Disgruntled series as well as other events), Open Space is an open meeting for anyone and everyone with an interest in our central question. If you have any thoughts or concerns related in any way to theatre and the international, you will have the time and space to call a session - to pose your own questions and possibly find some answers in a relaxed, thoughtful setting.
I look forward to seeing you there.
Theatre For Young Audiences: An International Perspective
Friday 2 July
2.00pm
ICA Cinema 1
Free entry; book through ICA Box Office 020 7930 3647
LIFT, TYA-UK and Takeoff present a unique opportunity to find out about and discuss international perspectives in theatre for young audiences from Simon Abrahams (Polyglot Theatre, Australia), Lyn Gardner (The Guardian), Tony Graham (Unicorn Theatre, UK), Darren O'Donnell (Mammalian Diving Reflex, Canada), Nina Hajiyianni (Action Transport Theatre, UK) and Miranda Thain (Theatre Hullabaloo, UK). The event will also launch the Takeoff Festival to be held in Darlington on 11 and 12 November 2010.
Theatre For Young Audiences: An International Perspective LIFTtalks 2010 by LIFTfestival
Thursday 15 July 15.30 - 17.30
£5 / £4 ICA Members plus + £1.20 booking fee per ticket in advance
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 includingLotfi Achour ofTunisian 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?
Theatre In The Arab World LIFTtalks2010 by LIFTfestival
Recording courtesy of the British Library © The British Library Board, 2010