More than a decade ago, experimental performance artists Blast Theory created a stir when they handed audience members paintball guns and invited them to ‘shoot’ at members of the cast. The group has since moved on to award-winning online gaming pursuits, but other companies are taking their place. Earlier this year, theatrical company Shunt continued to intrigue critics with their Time Out Live Award-winning show Dance Bear Dance, in which audience members became conspirators in a plot.
Only a smattering of critics give these performances the attention they deserve. Therefore, it’s understandable if you have not yet heard of 1157 performance group – another company that has emerged over the past eight years with the desire to push the boundaries of what theatre can be and in particular, making the audience active participants. The company was established in 1995 by co-founders Matthew Scott and Jo Dagless, two actors who felt restricted by the frameworks of film and mainstream theatre, in which they had previously worked.
‘In theatre, there is a bit more collaboration [than in film], but still, at the end of the day your are working under someone else’s vision,’ Scott explains.
‘We thought our vision was quite strong, so we wanted to create our own [vision] and make ourselves a part of that creation process.’
Scott had been inspired by a number of avant garde companies he has worked with in North America, akin to groups like the renowed American company, The Wooster Group, which UK audiences would be most familiar with. Several experiences, like performing in a 12-hour production of Hamlet, changed Scott’s view of what theatre could be and he realised the imaginative opportunities that the theatrical framework offered.
Although some of these avant garde influences still remain in their work, eight years on, Scott believes that 1157 has ‘created a language that is quite unique.’ A recurring focus of the group’s work is to break down the so-called ‘fourth wall’ in theatre – that is, the barrier between the performers and the audience.
The group began by staging ‘deconstructed’ versions of Shakespeare works, often placing contemporary stories gleaned from cast members’ everyday lives alongside the classical texts. In 1157’s Hamlet, audience members were asked whether they wanted to hear certain speeches from the famous play, resulting in much heckling and jeering. Another early piece took HIV and AIDS as its subject matter, and in one part involved a panel discussion with the audience. ‘Because it was a contentious issue, it allowed for a drama to unfold between us [the company] and the audience, which at times was really electric,’ Scott recalls.
More recently, the company created a trilogy of work based around ideas of memory, morality and mortality, which was two years in the making and premiered last year. The third part of the trilogy, about death and dying, sparked controversy because the company wanted to use a real corpse. Scott argues that whilst the human body has been the subject of many a controversial art exhibition – he cites Professor Gunther Von Hagen’s Bodyworlds – and is ultimately widely accepted as ‘art’ in a gallery space, this attitude, he believes, has not transferred to the stage.
‘Theatre hasn’t been allowed to stretch the parameters as much as the art world,’ Scott comments. ‘I think theatre does need to catch up with the times.’
The company’s latest show emerged from the experience of creating the trilogy, according to Scott. The questions the third show raised about mortality, death and dying actually prompted the group members to question their own identities – forcing themselves to ask ‘Who am I?’ – the theme at the heart of Seen and not seen.
‘It’s about identity and our place in the world,’ explains Scott. ‘Also, [it’s] about the process of trying to look for your own identity as well…we’re really trying to get scientific about it – every time you ask that question, you do jump out of yourself…your subjective experience can be experienced, but it can’t be seen.’
Scott says the company’s use of technology – they use software created by the director of the New York dance company Troika Ranch, which is also used by the Wooster Group – allows the identity question to be explored on another level.
‘What we are able to do now with the software that we have, is to manipulate images in real time, so if I appear in front of you on a television monitor I can be split up, warped, coloured, de-fragmented and put back together again. So it allows us to be more creative and dramatic with an image that we are presenting on a television screen.’
And the audience, as always, plays a part in Seen and not seen too, with cast members taking polaroids of audience members, as well as opportunities for the gathered crowd to pause and reflect on what has unfolded before them. But Scott doesn’t want to give too much away.
‘It is quite kaleidoscopic – each audience member will take a different show away with them, depending on what connections they make with what bits of material.’
‘Seen and not seen’ will be performed tonight, October 1, at Norden Farm Centre for the Arts, Maidenhead; and October 3 and 4 at Jacksons Lane, London. For future tour dates visit the company’s website www.1157performancegroup.fsnet.co.uk
