Participation in drama is one of the most successful means of engaging people in communal and collaborative exploration and engagement. But the amount of influence in both the story and the enactment of it has always been controlled by the director, the playwright or the auteur, although this can be heavily disguised by those magicians of theatre. Unless the art is to be second fiddle to the act of engagement for instrumental purposes.
Even if we go right back to the roots of drama, in Athens, before Thespis broke the ranks of the chorus to become the first protagonist and before we had dialogue, the theatre was used as a tool for communal engagement. The amount of influence afforded to the spectators was limited to voting for the winner of the drama competitions and the participation was that core and all absorbing communal activity of being an audience where we are willingly taken on a journey of discovery.
Through the centuries, the degree of influence and participation has been determined according to the desires of those setting the agenda and according to whether the motives of the powers that be have been primarily artistic or primarily political. And what those particular political ideologies have been. The political theatre of the 20th century was largely led by self-appointed left wing magii, like John McGrath, whose brilliant work with the original 7.84 theatre company captured the hearts and minds of audiences who shared the political idealogy the company promoted.
But if the politics of the Age of With are about community collaboration, 21st century political theatre will need to be of a different kind. A theatre of genuine and wholesale collaboration is counter-intuitive to Tragedy, to our great theatre as auteured by our playwrights and directors. Theatre gurus from Brecht to Boal, Brook to Barker, have vented their spleen on their predecessors, attacking their styles of audience manipulation, chiding them for too much, or too little sentiment, naturalism and emotion. But all of this is beside the point. Every theatre guru is a director and/or playwright who is also a magus committed to the mastery of theatre to tell a story or to make a point. The arguments the gurus have amongst themselves are about two things. One, the tools those magicians can use, or the theatrical techniques, to manipulate us. From the Theatre of Cruelty to the Theatre of Ideas, its all about technique. The other is around the interrelated issue of political ideology. So Brecht argues that theatre must be didactic and engage the brain and not the emotion – to engage and understand his political ideology. All of these theatrical masters have used all the tricks of the trade in performers, rehearsed the atmosphere of timing, set, costumes, sound and stage effects to create a spell in the theatre. The best use of the ‘song sheet’ I ever saw was in the original production of 7:84’s The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black Black Oil when we joined in a panto-style chorus to the tune of a traditional Scottish song where the characters were substituted by oil companies (Morag for Mobil etc).
But the line can be crossed when the priority is engagement and not the magic of performance. Augusto Boal crosses the line and goes further in his Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theatre, so that the participants become spectator- actors and also control the story , characters and how it is enacted. For Boal the participation and collaboration is more important than the story he wants to tell and theatre is an instrument for revolution.
This ethos also guides community and education plays and programmes where the engagement is the most important aspect for a community which is celebrating its history, learning about bullying or other issues. It is not surprising that there is often a tension when these projects are set up within a traditional theatre organisation.
So if this is the Theatre of With, does it need theatres at all? The all important aspect for Forum Theatre is the collaboration with the role of the theatre professional being to support the spectator –actor. Best not in proscenium arch theatres then and best not dependent on a 730 start arranged months in advance with drinks at the interval. Best not within the 20th century business model then. Given the cost of our 20th century business model, this could be an opportunity.
