Winning a Time Out Live Award three weeks ago for Best Production on the Fringe couldn’t have come at a better time for Shunt, says the show’s Director, David Rosenberg. ‘That was fantastic for us,’ he enthuses. ‘It was such a great boost.’ The announcement preceded the quirky theatre group’s new and improved season of last year’s critical successs (and now award-winning show), Dance Bear Dance.
Obviously, winning recognition from the entertainment bible of London means Shunt’s performances, which are perhaps better described as ‘live events’, could draw a whole new audience over coming weeks. When Dance Bear Dance first opened last summer, it was largely through word-of-mouth that audience numbers began to creep steadily up from the initial single-digit attendances, Rosenberg recalls. It certainly impressed Battersea Arts Centre’s Artistic Director, Tom Morris, who told the Independent newspaper it was the most surprising theatrical event of 2002. ‘The whole thing felt like being inside the head of a drunken genius,’ he commented. ‘And there really was a bear, and it really did dance.’ Clearly, when it comes to mystery and intrigue, a Shunt event has all the ingredients to get people talking.
The cooperative company’s previous production, The Tennis Show, involved the audience being split in two and seated on opposite sides of a tennis court, while in The Ballad of Bobby François, both audience members and actors became passengers on a plane which crashes in the Andes. The survivors – the actors – were observed for the rest of the show by the (dead) audience. Dance Bear Dance is no exception in the unconventional, site-specific theatre ground this innovative company continues to tread.
At the company’s base – beneath a railway arch in Bethnal Green – audience members are led into the space, with trains rumbling ominously overhead, to find themselves becoming conspirators in a plot. But by terrorists, or politicians? Rosenberg is not so sure himself anymore, considering his observation of the rhetoric flying around the political camps in the US and Britain of late.
Originally inspired by the so-called Gunpowder Plot – a bungled attempt in 1605 to blow up British Parliament – the show was begun by Shunt’s group of ten performers in 2001. Then came the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, and suddenly the company’s fascination with conspiracy theories became tangled up in world events.
‘When September 11 happened, we were looking at the work we had done so far and looking at the parallels,’ Rosenberg explains. ‘The main difference being that the [September 11 attacks] were successful. From that point, since the whole “War on Terror” began, the whole rehearsal process became much more “political”… We kept the ideas of the Gunpowder Plot, but began to involve ourselves more with current issues.’
That said, however, Rosenberg argues the piece is not overtly political. ‘It’s playing with the political situation in a wider context,’ he emphasises.
In fact, the performance space itself was a major contributor to the creation of the show, according to Rosenberg. The then newly-established company rented out the derelict railway arch in 1998, and it has since played a crucial role in Shunt’s performances. In The Ballad of Bobby François, the rumbling of an oncoming train was akin to the sounds that might precede an avalanche. But for Dance Bear Dance, Rosenberg says: ‘The space created the show… In more of an important way than the Gunpowder Plot.’ In this case, the trains become the target of an attack.
‘It’s a journey through different environments,’ he adds, describing the audiences’ (and actors’) progression from a conference table, to a church and casino, while incorporating the sounds of the trains overhead and confusing the audience’s perception of what is real and what is not, with the use of sound recordings.
Although some may baulk at the idea of a theatrical experience which shuns the notion of an audience as passive voyeurs, Rosenberg offers assurances that people will be safer at a Shunt performance than in the front row of comedy gig. ‘We don’t like to tell the audience what to do,’ he asserts. ‘The structure of the piece is about getting them to do what they have to do, in order to enjoy the performance.’
It’s a model which, in just five years, is beginning to earn the eclectic group of performers recognition. And they’re not about to change, or try and make it big in the West End. Instead, Rosenberg is more inclined to be excited by the prospects a huge derelict building in Whitechapel, with hundreds of windows facing out onto the street. (‘We go past it everyday, thinking: “Ooooh, that would be great!” he laughs.)
‘We’re not trying to attract a normal theatre audience’, Rosenberg concedes. ‘Although we have done a few bits and pieces in theatres – working in non-theatre spaces is really the main thrust of our work. That’s what we want to continue to do.’
‘Dance Bear Dance’ is currently playing at 9pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, Arch 12A Gales Gardens, by Bethnal Green Tube, until May 11. Tickets £15/£10 on 020 7739 9905 or email to events@shunt.co.uk
